TRU TALES FEATS: Mother’s Day Gift

Here’s what I made for my MIL for Mother’s Day:

It’s a sugar bowl bird feeder/waterer

Here’s a closer pic

I got the inspiration here from a teacup bird feeder tutorial.

I could not find any teacup/saucer combinations I liked, so I went with a sugar bowl. I actually like this better. It has a bigger area for water than a teacup and I could use a bigger plate and spoon that would not look out of place if using a smaller teacup.

Basically, this is how I made it.

1) Plan this for several days in advance, because you need to have the glue cure.

2) Find a nice sugar bowl, plate, and spoon. either of your own or from a thrift store or garage sale. Mine were matching, but you could certainly do coordinating or even contrasting colors.

Even my spoon had a rose on it to match the plate.

3) You need to sand around the bottom of the sugar bowl, the bottom of the spoon and the 2 coordinating areas on the plate where they will both sit to roughen it up so the glue will adhere well. I didn’t take pics of the sanding process, but I think it is self explanatory. Just be sure to sand quite a lot of the glaze off.

4) Glue the bowl and spoon to the plate using E-6000 glue. This is some strong glue that is waterproof. Follow the directions on the package. It takes about 24 hrs. to cure before you can flip it over and do the backside.

5) After the glue has cured for a day, turn the feeder over and glue a 1/2” copper cap in the middle of the plate. Again the surface of both the plate and the cap need to be roughened up with sand paper. Make sure to apply a generous amount of glue to the plate and cap, because the cap is usually convex, so you need to make sure it is going to be held over the entire cap.

Original way.... didn't work out so well.

** UPDATE **

5) It was not sturdy enough with the E-6000 and just that small area to apply glue to. One twist with my husbands strong hands and it wanted to move too easily. This is what we did to reinforce the cap and make a larger surface for adhesive. My husband soldered a fender washer to the top of the cap and then filed it to roughen the surface and make it even. Meanwhile, I scraped off the glue from the bottom of the plate and sanded a larger area to accommodate the fender washer size. This time around, I glued it with waterproof epoxy. It dried to a light amber color , but that's ok, since it's underneath and won't be seen. After curing for 24 hrs., it's solid and not going anywhere.

New improved version with a fender washer soldered to the cap

I didn’t even bother to remove the entire tag, since it will be on the bottom and not show.

6) In the meantime; while you wait for this glue on the bottom to cure. You can prepare the stake. This is made from a 36” piece of 1/2” copper tubing. I bought a 10’ piece at the hardware store because I plan to make one of theses for myself as well, but I saw you could get these in 5’ sections also, which were more expensive/ft. Personally, I think I might like more than one of these in my yard. Cut the tubing with a pipe cutter if you have one, or a hacksaw. Sand around one end of the tubing as far as the cap will go on, so that the cap will slide on easily. These are very tight fitting; after all, they are made to hold water. On the other end, hammer the tubing flat , to make a “knife edge” to poke into the ground easier.

7) Stick the pipe into the ground about a foot. Once the glue has cured on the back of the plate, you can turn it over, slip it onto the pipe, and fill the bowl with water and put some bird food on the plate.

Here's the bird feeder in my in-laws front yard with bird seed and water.