Vintage Tart Tin Bird Cages for Valentine’s Day

I often come across vintage tart tins in all sorts of shapes and sizes when out vintage shopping. Do you? In today’s post we’re going to use some of them to create vintage tart tin birdcages for Valentine’s Day.

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Materials to Make Tart Tin Bird Cages

Materials:

• Tart tins (vintage or new)
• 20 gauge wire
• Paddle wire
• Hot glue gun & glue sticks
• Ribbon
• Spanish moss or green moss
• Small birds (approx 1″)
• Buttons (optional)
• Word tags

How to Make Tart Tin Bird Cages

Step 1: Make the Cage: Cut 6 10″ pieces of 20 gauge wire and lightly bend them into U-shapes. You’re going to connect them with some of the finer paddle wire right at the point where they intersect when you put them into a bird cage shape.

Next, apply some hot glue over the fine wire to secure it. To “hide” the hot glue, I wrapped it with some more wire.

But you don’t have to worry too much about hiding the glue because it will end up pretty much covered by ribbon later on.

Step 2: Attach the Cage to the Tart Tin: Next you’re going to secure the wire cage to the tart pan bottom using hot glue. Don’t get to partiular about how you do this since you’ll be covering the glue splotches later on with Spanish or green moss.

Make sure to evenly space the six wires around the inside of your tart pan.

Step 3: Make the Hanging Loop: Cut a 12″ piece of paddle wire. Fold it in half and make a loop in the center by wrapping it around a pencil or a dowel. Secure it to the top of your cage by twisting the wire underneath your wire-wrapped hot glue blob.

You should have two pieces of wire hanging down for your swing.

Step 4: Make a Bird Perch: Cut a 2″ piece of a small dowel or shish kabob skewer and wrap the wire (that’s hanging down after you made the loop above) around each end.

Step 5: Attach Birds: Hot glue your birds (I bought mine at Michael’s) onto their perch and cover the bottom of the tart pan with some moss.

Step 6: Button Flowers (optional): Add some vintage button flowers if you like. Hot glue the buttons onto small pieces of the 20 gauge wire and tuck them into the moss.

Step 7: Add Ribbon: Tie on a piece of ribbon along with a tag containing a “love” sentiment like, “love you more” or “je t’aime”.

Here it is all ready to display for Valentine’s Day.

It looks nice with ironstone as a back-drop.

A Hanging Loop Alternative

An alternative way to secure your bird cage wires together and create a hanging loop is to lightly fold the wire in half, and then twist them together (at the bend) into a loop.

That’s how I made this one with the blue love birds.

I make the paper tags by printing the phrases on manila card stock, cutting them out, and punching a small hole in the end.

A little bit of ribbon adds some color.

For this version, I used a vintage square tart tin and made the edge more festive by attaching some pretty red and white trim.

The front of the pan look vacant, so I added a “happy valentine’s” tag.

I added a few button flowers as well.

They’re adding some holiday cheer to my ironstone cupboard right now.

I think some of my younger nieces and nephews will find them fascinating, as they do most things that come in miniature sizes.

I hope you enjoyed today’s vintage-y project; they’re the very best kind, aren’t they?

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