Bird-caged Creativity

In a stroke of either luck or genius I happened upon an inexpensive vintage bird cage at a garage sale a couple of weeks ago.  My first thought when I saw the rusted out treasure was, “Eureka a Planter!”

Here are just a few photos of the transformation process. You’ll have to excuse my photos a tad bit as I busted my little Nikon screen at Christmas time due to a very sad but able to recover from accident so I was kind of shooting blind.  Here goes…

My first purchase was a cheap can of spray paint. I have to say it was one of the hardest decisions I had to make but I finally decided on black. You can chose which ever you like just make sure it is an indoor/ outdoor paint.

Since I live in an apartment complex I thought it might be best to not spray the whole balcony with black paint so I draped the area with cheap trash bags (cheap being the operative world thus far)  It also helped block any wind that was coming through and trust me it’s was pretty windy that day.

Here is the after, see how nice it looks?  No more rust. You can’t see it but I also took out the removable tray on the bottom and also spray painted it black to continue the effect. That also helped stop any further rusting that might occur.

By the way you can feel free to judge me on the still hanging Christmas lights.  I just decided to turn them into garden lights. At least that’s what my head is allowing me to use as an excuse.

This is the final effect.  I decided to add some Pansies and Violas. I discovered they were a bit to high so I took some coconut lining from an old hanging basket and it worked wonders.  I can’t wait to see how well they hold up.  All in all I think it turned out very well.  It looks so nice sitting on my balcony with my *ahem* garden lights and it makes me have happy thoughts of spring and sunshine.

And speaking of complete happiness here is what I found in the mail today during my lunch break

Real Simple always makes a great day that much better.  Thanks again for following and be sure to check back for some new photos I’ll be adding to the collection. I’m so excited to share! And don’t forget to sign up for my giveaway.  There’s only a week left to enter!