This Is For The Birds!

A little bit of Goodwill crafting today...

My cats are enjoying the patio door (aka Cat TV) so much these days. We get about 25 different varieties of birds (including ducks, geese, and a hawk) coming and going all day, plus a couple of bunnies, a raccoon, a chipmunk, and an occasional opossum. Achilles and Miss Gracie love to watch them all.

So we have a bird house, a bird feeder (although they seem to just prefer to eat it off the ground), and a hummingbird feeder. The bat house was a bust, so I thought "Why not add a bird bath?" That would be good for the birds, especially in the heat of the summer. And I think my cats would enjoy watching the birds frolic.

(By the way, Tanith Lee's Tales of the Flat Earth has a chapter in which birds are conversing at a puddle. It's exactly the way I imagine birds would speak to each other.)

So, yesterday, when M and I went to Goodwill, I picked up these things:

This glass vase was a steal!

I think, with the half price deals, all of this was less than $5. (That tall vase, btw, is almost $20 brand new. Score!) So this is a metal dresser tray, a tall glass vase, and a flower shaped metal charger plate. Pretty simple.

I glued it all together with E-6000 (This glue is definitely in my go-bag for the zombie apocalypse. It may take a bit to dry, but if you want something permanently attached, this is the stuff.)

E-6000, my crafting buddy.

I just "guesstimated" where the center of this
was, and glued the tall vase there. It seemed
pretty balanced.

I had to put it in another room to dry.
Some cats were very interested in
what I was doing.

Then I base coated it with a flat black. I like to base coat in black because I think it gives a really good foundation for the top layer of paint. You know how sometimes when you paint glass you have some thin spots in the paint? With a black base coat, you don't get that. It also covers up any imperfections so you can get a nice, even coat to start with.


Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of the black base coat. But here is what it looks like after spraying on some Fleck Stone paint. I also painted 4 little pots (sealed the inside with black so the moisture doesn't wreck the paint job) and filled them with some petunias to provide some weight and a little more stability to the bird bath.

I sealed the whole thing with some clear acryllic. Hopefully that does the trick.

We put it out on the porch, in view of the patio window, but so far the birds have only examined it suspiciously. They have done numerous flyovers, but no one has landed yet. Oh well. Eventually, they will forget about it being new and just start using it, I'm sure.

Miss Gracie can't wait.