Turn A Small, Old Teapot Lid Into An Adorable Bird Feeder With Vintage Vibes

Bird feeders are a wonderful addition to a backyard, but buying a fancy one from the store isn't the only way to attract a diverse variety of birds to your yard. Before you order a brand new feeder from Amazon, look through your kitchen cupboard. You might have an old teapot with a lid that's perfect for a cute and vintage-inspired DIY bird feeder.

The idea for this hack is to drill holes into the inner rim of the lid — the part that sits within the teapot when it's closed. Using these holes, you can suspend the lid upside down using cord, creating a cute and delicate hanging receptacle. The original idea came from TikTok creator @arvin2215, who used this approach to create small hanging plant pots. But instead of soil and flowers, you can easily fill the lids with bird seeds.

For this DIY, you'll need a circular ceramic teacup lid, which you can buy at your local thrift store,  though you might have some forgotten ones in your kitchen cupboards. You won't need the body of the teapot, but you can find tons of ways to upcycle it, like making charming garden DIYs out of tea sets. Don't get anything too fancy, since you'll be making holes into the lids and leaving them outside. To drill the holes into the ceramic, get some diamond drill bits. And to hang the DIY bird feeder, get some jute cord and a small wooden stick (or rod from the craft store). As for food, you can DIY your very own bird seed mix or buy some pre-made packs at the garden center.

The most important part of this DIY is the drilling of the holes. First and foremost, both holes need to be perfectly aligned on either side of the lid, or else the lid won't hang flat and the seeds will fall out. To do this, you can add pieces of painter's tape to the lid's inner rim, and with a ruler that passes through the circle's center, mark two opposite points on the tape with a permanent marker. (You can drill through the tape.)

@arvin3315

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Drilling through ceramic takes patience and precision, because you're risking breaking the entire piece if you go about it wrong. Therefore, make sure not to go too fast or too hard, using just light pressure with the drill. Another tip is to add a bit of water to the ceramic, which helps avoid overheating and breaking. When both holes are made, add the jute cord through the holes and make knots on the inside to hold it in place. Then, attach the twine to the stick or rod, and add another piece of thread on top of it to act as the hanger, which you can hook onto a branch, bird feeder pole, or nail. You can customize this DIY by adding two more holes on either side of the teapot lid (all at equidistance), where you can fit another wooden rod to act as bird perches on either side.

You can repeat this DIY with several teapot lids, hanging all of them from the same stick. Besides bird seeds, fill some of them with water, or make a mixture of lard and seed mix to help wildlife get through colder months.