Make a Hanging Bird Bath With Tissue Paper and Resin

Amy has wanted to make a bird bath for some time now. She thought it would be cool to make the bath in such a way that it would be able to catch the light and be very colorful. She did this using tissue paper and resin. Hanging it from a shepherd's hook came as an idea when we were trying to figure out how to put it on a pedestal.

What you'll need

• Tissue paper (the more colors, the better)
• Mold (we used a silicone pie pan)
• Resin (we used Famowood Glaze Coat)
• Chain
• Drill
• Pliers

Make sure you check out the video, it shows a bit more of each step than the images do. Please enjoy and if you make it or something like it, we'd love to see it. Share it with us on here or on Facebook, Google+, etc.

This step is pretty simple. Just cut a bunch of strips of tissue paper. The sizes and colors don't matter. You'l just need quite a few.

Next, you'll want to mix up some resin. Use whatever brand you like. We use Famowood Glaze Coat, but just about any will work. Make sure you follow the mixing instructions for the resin that you use.

NOTE - Some resins are designed for outdoor use and some are not. The resin we are using is NOT, but it has been outside for about 2-3 weeks and we haven't noticed any problems yet.

To create the dish that will be the bath you can use whatever dish-like mold you like. We used a 9" silicone pie pan.

We started by pouring some resin into the mold. Then, we soaked random pieces of tissue paper in that resin and began to build up a side wall in the mold. The resin makes this very sticky and it holds to the side very well.

Once the sides are built up, we started layering the bottom of the mold the same way.

When we had it built up how we wanted we let it sit to cure for 12+ hours.

Once it was cured we added another layer and also thickened up the rim of mold by folding the tissue paper over and making it thicker. Then we let it sit to cure for another 12 hours.

The dish should release from the mold extremely easy if you used a silicone mold. There may be some voids where air was trapped. But, overall it should be sealed enough to hold water now.

We bought a longer length of chain at our local home improvement store and cut it to lengths we wanted. Ours hangs on three chains that meet in the middle and hang on another short length of chain. Removing the links of the chain we bought was pretty easy. You could just pry them open with some pliers.

Once we had the lengths we wanted, we drilled three evenly spaced holes around the perimeter of the dish about 1/2" below the rim. Then we pried open the last link, ran it through the hole and crimped it together. We did the same thing for all three lengths.

Then we pinched them all together in the center and tied everything together with a length of wire. You could also use one link from the chain to do this.

Once they were all tied together, we added the final length of chain.

NOTE - You may have to adjust some links and do some bending to get it to hang correctly.

We added some drain holes about an inch or so from the bottom to keep the bath from overflowing when it rains.

Once the chain is hooked up you can go test it out. We hang ours from a shepherd's hook in our flowerbed. This is when you will want to adjust the chain. You can fill it with water and see if it is level. If not, you can adjust the lengths of chain.

Using the resin and tissue paper you could get pretty creative with the colors and perhaps even add in some designs. So far, the birds have enjoyed it and the drainage holes have worked nicely, keeping it from overflowing. There haven't been any large birds on it yet, so we're not sure how the weight of them will effect the balance, but smaller birds seem to be okay.

We hope you enjoyed this DIY project and the video that goes along with it. If you have any questions or comments please let us know, we'd be more than happy to help you out. Thanks for checking out this Instructable.