It's for the Birds...

I've seen the idea of using a Terra-cotta pot for a bird bath in many different places, but most recently at Dad and Susan's house. Susan made one and had it in the garden, and I guess seeing one for real in a garden made me start to think this was something my girls and I could do together. I tried to plan it so that ours could be one unit made up of several parts, so this is what we did. You can build yours however you like. You can even be like me and stack pots together in the Terra-cotta isle at Michaels until you have the perfect arrangement (or Wal-mart or wherever you choose to purchase your pots). For ours, I purchased one large pot and tray, one medium pot and tray, one smaller pot and tray, plus one extra medium pot.

I coated each pot, inside and out, with a coat of Kiltz
Premium Interior/Exterior.

My older daughter painted the smaller pot along with the extra medium pot. She chose to do an ocean theme. My younger daughter painted abstract art on the medium pot. And I painted the large pot in modern decor style, I guess you would call it. We used acrylic craft paint.

For my pot, I used wide masking tape so that I could make stripes.
I painted light green between the lines of tape.

I removed the tape before the green paint was completely dry so that I would not peel off any of the paint along with the tape. Then when the green paint was dry, I painted purple in between the stripes of green, just being careful to paint inside the lines. Then I painted some pink on the rim of the pot, and painted the tray with those same colors.

I wanted a design inside the tray, as this would become the
bird bath, so I used two sizes of jar lids to make circle templates.

Then I filled in the circles.

Here's my section of our bird bath.

Work in progress, the girls loved painting their pots.

My older daughter's ocean themed section.
The medium pot is the bottom base, with the smaller
pots stacked on top to make it taller than the rest.

Her ocean theme has yellow sand at the bottom, with the light blue ocean, darker blue sky, and yellow sun. After I took this picture, she added more detail in her ocean, sky, and sun.

The abstract design of my younger daughter's section. She,
too, added detail after I took a picture.

After everyone was finished painting and happy with their results, I added three coats of gloss exterior/interior varnish. This part is pretty important, especially if you plan to place your bird bath outside, which is the logical place for it. I also glued the tray to the base using E-6000 craft glue.

The final look of how they are set up in the garden.

Close up of the finished Ocean bird bath.
I love the bird and clouds she added to the sky,
and the sun she painted inside the tray.

Close up of the finished abstract bird bath. I personally am incapable
of mismatched and random. Even though I cannot create abstract,
I do like what others can create. I really love how hers turned out.

"And God said, 'Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.'" Genesis 1:20