I know a few bird-lovers so I thought it would be a fun idea to re-purpose a couple mason jars to gift some bird seed. These are way cuter than a giant bag of bird seed, easier than making the bird seed ornaments I've seen on other blogs, and would look great sitting on a shelf by the back door!
I have two separate styles for these jars since I'll be gifting them to a couple different people. I didn't take any photos of the process for the larger mason jar, but I purchased the jar at the craft store since I wanted a really HUGE glass jar and I used hot-glue to attach both the bird and the nest.
For the smaller jars, I started with a couple of quart-sized glass jars that I purchased at the local farmer's market filled with honey (yeah, we go through THAT much honey!). The labels didn't peel off very well and I lost one of the lids somehow (there should have been two white lids). Luckily I found a lid from a spaghetti sauce jar that fit this glass jar perfectly so I used some brown spray paint to give it a nice chocolate brown color.
One of the gift-receiving bird lovers also loves to feed the (very fat) squirrels that run around their yard. I found some "Critter feed mix" at the grocery store in the bulk foods section and thought it would be perfect to make a jar of bird feed and a jar for the critter feed. The critter feed has mostly sunflower seeds, corn, and peanuts. At the craft store I found a small squirrel figurine in addition to the bird and bird nest. I used hot glue to attach the squirrel and bird nest to the lids.
To cover the leftover glue spots from the honey label, I created "critter food" and "bird food" labels by making a squirrel silhouette and a bird silhouette and printed them on scrapbook paper to give them a fun texture.
I'm a little obsessed with baker's twine right now so I added a little brown and white baker's twine string to the lid.
Here's a close-up of the larger jar:
I used regular yellow and green ribbon to tie a label around the jar that reads "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." There is also a separate scalloped circle with a bird silhouette since this jar doesn't have a label adhered directly to the jar.
Another option if you don't want to use hot glue is to find a bird (or squirrel) Christmas ornament to tie around the neck of the jar so they have an ornament to hang up on their tree!
This is a very easy gift that you can make yourself to give to the bird-lover in your life!
Love this so much! I will be making this my "White Elephant" Christmas gift this year so perfect!!! Thanks for sharing!!
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