Crafty Way to Protect Your Strawberries from the Birds

Grab your kids and some paint and lets make some strawberries!

Red Delicious California Strawberries, wink wink

Took me a year to realize that we probably DID have strawberries last year, but the birds ate them before we got a chance. Not this year birds!

After scouring the internet for solutions I found this brilliant quick tip to naturally keep the birds away without nets, cayenne pepper or some kind of unsightly lawn ornament.

You will need:

• Paint - Red, green and black or yellow (I like the Ceramcoat Acrylic Paints by Delta. I get mine at Michaels, but you can get a great set of 16 here for cheap).

• Rocks - Preferably strawberry shaped!

• Paint brush

• Toothpick

I picked out 7 rocks for my garden (although I might want more, but I think I will see if it works first). Before I got

started I washed the rocks and let them dry in the sun. Just so you know, red paint is notorious for being hard to get good coverage with, so you will need a few coats. I ended up using Cardinal Red and applied about 2-3 coats. (You don't want to buy a cheap brand as it will take many coats to get the same coverage).

I used 2 different greens for the leaves using an actual strawberry from the garden for reference (pictured on the right side). They don't have to be perfect, because you are honestly just painting these for the birds.

I don't know why black is a natural choice for making the seeds since strawberry seeds are yellow, but you can experiment with both and see what you like (or what you think the birds will like, lol). Just dip your toothpick into the paint and make your seeds.

This would be a great project for your kids to do at school. You get to reap the rewards without the mess! Maybe you could be the cool mom and mention it to your kids teacher, I won't tell.

Fun for the whole family! The kids get to paint for themselves for once, you stop the pesky birds from stealing the strawberries and your husband laughs at the fact that you think this will work.

Looks believable, right?!

Voila, natural bird deterrent. Now to see if it works! Looks pretty good to me.

You can follow me @EpiTamioflife on Instagram or at TwoBeesandCo on Etsy. (Hopefully I will get a YouTube channel set up too!)

NOTE: You can not make strawberry shortcake with these, but you WILL be able to with the strawberries you will now be able to harvest. Happy painting!