A couple of weeks ago we painted our house. It needed it badly! With a fresh coat of paint on the house, I thought it might be fun to spruce up the old bird feeder in the backyard too. The bird feeder was built by the first owner of this house and it was painted to match. Many years have gone by, so I pulled out the paint and got to work. When I was done it looked a little plain. It was right about that time that I received some fun stencils to try out.

Martha Stewart has a brand new line of multi-surface paints and a variety of tools to use them with. This line is only available at Michael’s craft stores, one of my favorite places to be! There are 160 colors to choose from and several finishes and mediums. I received a big package of goodies to try out (more tutorials to come!) and decided to try out a couple of the stencils I received to add a little flair to my plain bird feeder. I definitely wanted a little something to add to the side of the feeder, the flower burst pattern was a perfect choice.

For the squirrel guard (that’s the metal tube under the feeder that stops squirrels from being able to climb up and eat all the bird seed!) was begging for a little typography. Martha has these awesome adhesive stencils that are absolutely perfect for rounded surfaces!

I think these are my all time favorite so far and wish every stencil was made this way!

Since I had already painted the bird feeder before receiving several of Martha’s paints, I went ahead and used the same house paint with these stencils. But don’t worry, I have other projects planned and will share those later!

Take a look at this before nastiness. Yuck right? Admittedly the wood is rotted on the roof and really needs to be replaced, but that’s a project for next spring. For now, I just cleaned it up, gave it a quick sanding with my palm sander and got to work.

I stenciled the flower burst onto the side of the feeder. This was trickier than I thought, but I’m impatient and don’t like to follow the rules :-P Because I didn’t properly tape this in place or use a spray adhesive (would have been MUCH smarter!) I did have some seepage under the stencil. I think that had a lot to do with the fact I was using exterior house paint to and probably didn’t get enough excess off my pouncer first. However, I just used a thin paintbrush and touched up around the areas that had seepage and all is well.

For the wording Martha suggests using a straight edge to create a line so that your words will line up. I’m a rebel and didn’t do that, instead I just lined up the adhesive stencils side by side and went to town. I really LOVE these adhesive stencil, they are fab! I did use some painter’s tape so I didn’t accidentally pounce over the edges of the stencils.

Here’s a close up.

I’m really pleased with my spruced up feeder. I just added some bird seed so the birds can enjoy it again as well. :)

Print Project

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Revamped Bird Feeder

Author: Amanda Formaro

Supplies

• stencils
• Martha Stewart’s multi-surface paints
• palm sander

Instructions

• For now, I just cleaned it up, gave it a quick sanding with my palm sander and got to work.
• I stenciled the flower burst onto the side of the feeder.
• I just used a thin paintbrush and touched up around the areas that had seepage and all is well.
• For the wording Martha suggests using a straight edge to create a line so that your words will line up. I’m a rebel and didn’t do that, instead I just lined up the adhesive stencils side by side and went to town. did use some painter’s tape so I didn’t accidentally pounce over the edges of the stencils.