Make your own bird decoration using recycled materials! Print off sheet at bottom of this page.
You can find a metal tubes from food products such as tomato puree, garlic paste, chestnut puree or harissa paste. You can also use cosmetic metal tubes such as nappy cream, toothpaste and hand cream tubes.
• Carefully cut the top and bottom off the tube, and up one side, to reveal a square of glorious gold. Wash out and dry. Be careful for any sharp bits, you can cut them off with your scissors. (Don't worry about metal blunting your scissors, it actually sharpens them!)
• Place your metal on a tea towel, book or magazine. Smooth it out using the back of a spoon. You can do it on the reverse side so as not to spoil the gold.
• Cut out the bird template, place it onto the metal and draw around the shape using a ballpoint pen, pencil, or even the non-brush end of a paintbrush. Carefully cut out the bird shape.
• On the pieces of metal left over, practice your drawing marks. See how they different when you draw from the reverse side of the metal. You can play with lines, cross hatching, circles, dots and wiggles.
• Now draw details onto your bird. You can use my lines as reference or take a look online at other inspiration on my Pinterest Board here
• Be careful making a hole for the hanging loop. Add a nice ribbon to really bring the decoration to life.
• You can watch my YouTube demo here
• Try adding colour with permanent markers!
This is designed to print off at home (A4 size). To save it ready for printing, right click (control + click on a Mac) and click "save image as".
