Upcycle Old Plant Pots Into The Cutest DIY Bird Feeder To Decorate Your Garden

Lighthouses have long been a symbol of safety and comfort for humanity, showing up as a decorative motif on everything from wall art to greeting cards. If you're an avid bird lover, a passionate gardener, and a fan of lighthouses, you can bring these decorative themes together in a lighthouse-shaped bird feeder. It doesn't require much to make this DIY birdfeeder – just some garden/craft supplies and a little creative magic are all that's needed to transform your old plant pots into a charming lighthouse bird feeder.

The plant pots will need to be three different sizes, which you'll fit together. If you think of them as the terracotta planter version of the nesting Russian dolls, you have the right idea of how this DIY will work. The terracotta pots shouldn't be too big because you'll place the large bottom one inside a shallow 10-inch terracotta saucer. If the bottom pot that makes up the lighthouse is too big, it won't fit into the saucer very well, and you'll reduce the area in which you can place the birdseed.

You'll find the terracotta saucer at garden centers or craft stores. The PSW Pot Collection Terracotta Saucers are an option if you'd rather let your fingers do the shopping, so to speak. You'll additionally require different colors of paint (to create windows and other details on the lighthouse) and paint brushes. Finally, a glue gun, a flameless candle, a jar for the flameless candle, and some bird seed are the last of the supplies you'll need to build this DIY project.

If you're repurposing your old planter pots, they'll need to be cleaned of any dirt or plant debris that remains in them. Once they're cleaned up and dried out, you're going to turn them into the body of the lighthouse by painting the small, medium, and large pots a solid color. You'll then paint windows and other details, like bricks and arched windows, on the sides of the three pots after that. Pro tip here: choose your paint wisely. An acrylic paint made for outdoor use may be your best bet in terms of helping the lighthouse to weather, well, all kinds of weather. You'll paint all of the terracotta saucers at this time, too.

Once your painting tasks are done, you'll have to glue the pots together. The easiest way to do this is to line the inside of the rims of the two smaller pots with some glue from your glue gun. While the three pots stacked together may remain steadfast inside the 10-inch saucer sans glue, you don't want to take a chance at having the tower topple over. In light of that, put a line of glue on the rim of the bottom pot to eliminate the possibility that the bird feeder will move around once the birdseed is added to the terracotta saucer. On top of the lighthouse tower, you'll glue one of the saucers in an upright position. The lighting mechanism (made from the flameless candle, the glass it goes in, and another terracotta saucer) goes inside the small terracotta saucer to create the bird feeder topper.

This DIY birdseed holder is something you could place on an outdoor table. This setup looks cute, but doesn't fully evoke the spirit of a lighthouse standing above the crashing waves of the ocean. One way to create this look and to give your repurposed terracotta pots a glow-up is to make a faux ocean from a bed of NAMTSO Blue Glow-in-the-Dark Rocks in your yard. 

First, create a rock garden by spreading the rocks out and laying down a border of garden stones or bricks around it. Then, place the bird feeder in the center of the rock garden to create a focal point. If your backyard is fenced, dedicating a small corner to your glow-in-the-dark ocean would be pretty. It would also make an eye-catching display in a front-yard flower garden. These typically nestle up next to the house. Consider substituting the glow-in-the-dark rocks for the white stone or wood bark that often gets laid down around flowers in this case. Your bird feeder could be a decorative element that you nestle between flowers.

Finally, you can enjoy watching the birds play around in their new feeder by installing a NETVUE by Birdfy Solar-Powered, Motion-Activated Bird Cam somewhere on the body of the bird feeder. The motion from the birds' movements activates the cam and sets the birdie matinee in motion on your smartphone.  So any time a bird lands on the lighthouse bird feeder, you'll know.