Aluminum Can Bird Feeders

This easy DIY kid's craft makes bird feeders out of recycled aluminum cans! All you need is dowels, ribbon, and of course birdseed!

I love doing art projects with recycled items from around the house. Recently, we made bird feeders out of recycled aluminum cans. My 4 year old Sophie had such a blast making these cute bird feeders and couldn’t wait for the birds to come enjoy them! All you need is some aluminum cans, paint, paintbrush, a dowel, hot glue, ribbon, and stuff to decorate the cans with. Oh, and birdseed of course!

We painted the cans with paint left over from the play kitchen makeover. After the paint dried, Sophie decorated the cans with sea shells we’d picked up on the beach a few weeks ago. I thought this was a great idea since we always come home with so many shells that we don’t know what to do with! Sophie showed me where she wanted to place the shells, and I helped attach them with hot glue. She wanted to make a face on each can. See how she arranged the shells to make eyes, nose and mouth?

Each can also received an angel shell on the side to represent a hair bow. Well dressed bird feeders attract more birds, you know! 😉

There are plenty of things you can decorate the cans with if you don’t have shells — stickers, glitter, markers, sequins, pom-poms. You could also use things from outside like leaves, sticks or acorns. Get creative!

To make a post for the birds to sit on, we cut a dowel into smaller pieces and attached it to the cans with hot glue.

We tied ribbons around the cans and hung them from the wax myrtles in our backyard. Then we filled them up with bird seed and waited for our feathered friends to discover their new bird feeders!

Sophie kept checking to see if the birds had eaten the seed yet and was really excited when some arrived! Unfortunately I wasn’t quick or quiet enough to capture them on camera!