Garden bees

ITALIAN VERSION CLIK HERE

Hello everybody!

This crafty idea is taken from a tv show called “Paint your life”, broadcasted by Real Time channel. I don’t follow the show because I find their projects kind of repetitive, plus I don’t have a new piece of furniture every week to repaint or repurpose! 🙂

Anyway, while I was with my friends in the mountains, lazily sitting on the couch in front of the tv, I saw the presenter making these little bees: they are very easy to make, and I didn’t have to buy anything, so… why not?

This is yet another project that allows us to creatively re-use the packaging that we have at home evey day: cans, plastic lids and bottles.

This is what we need:

empty can

2 small metal lids

4 plastic lids

metal wire

acrilic colors or tempera + brushes

plastic bottle

+ hot glue gun

+ pliers, scissors, gimlet

1) Paint your can with yellow color, then make the black or brown stripes.

2) Color with brown the 4 plastic lids too.

3) Hole the can with the gimlet (or with hammer and nail). 4 small lateral holes from where the legs will come out and 1 bigger central hole in which we will insert the stick.

4) Hole the plastic lids too.

5) Make the legs of the bee. Slip a piece of wire (8 cm more or less) in the hole of one of the plastic lids. Block it there, making a small loop with the pliers, so that the wire cannot come out of the plastic lid anymore. Do the same with one of the holes previously made in the can. This is a picture of the inside of the can:

6) Cut a piece of plastic out of the bottle.

7) Draw the wings with a marker, then cut them.

8) Glue the wings to the bee’s body. (if you scratch the plastic with sand paper first, the glue will attach better)

9) Again with the glue gun, attach the two metal lids (the bee’s eyes, on which you previously drew the pupils) on the bee’s face.

10) Slip a stick into the bigger hole… our bee is ready to live in the garden or in a flower pot 🙂

This is also the nature-friendly version: instead of plastic lids, I only used  peach’s stones. With this particular kind of peach, called “Saturnina”, you don’t even need to hole its stone, because it has lots of nooks for the wire to pass through.

All of those who saw both of the bees, preferred this smaller version (me too!)

SEE YOU SOON FOLKS 🙂

Linking this project here: