Balcony Bridge/Bird Feeder

I wanted to make some kind of bird feeding trough for my balcony to go along with my hummingbird feeder to get some bigger birds hanging out my windows. I decided using leftover foam from my last project was the way to go and I like the idea of miniature stuff so I decided to build a bridge with a trough to lazily dump bird seed in.

• Foam (I think it was $8 a sheet for a 2ft x 2ft square, I used 1 1/2 boards and have a good amount leftover for future builds)
• Hot glue gun and glue
• toothpicks or hobby sticks for reinforcement (very much optional, I just wanted extra security since its clamping to a third story balcony)
• Acrylic Paints, cheap and durable I just used Black, White, Red, Yellow, and Blue
• Cutting tool, I used a box cutter
• string or ruler for loose measurements
• sharpie or pen to mark the foam
• Your choice of bird seed as I am no expert!

I had all this lying around so it was basically free, but would probably cost about 20$ if you needed to buy everything if you went to a dollar store for the glue gun and paints.

Design what kind of bridge you want to make! I like long arched bridges with brick/stone work on the sides and thought lil castle battlements would be cool to add and learned they're specifically called this -> "An indented parapet at the top of a wall, at first used only in fortified buildings for purposes of defence against assailants, but afterwards in the architectural decoration of ecclesiastical and other edifices. The raised parts are called cops or merlons, the indentations embrasures or crenelles" according to the oxford dictionary for battlement.

I originally wanted to build a castle at the end of the bridge to sit against the wall, but spent most of the day building the bridge and I get burnt out of cutting and detailing foam, especially a project that is already four feet in length!

I refuse to be too accurate when it comes to art projects. I measured the width of the railing with a string and marked it with my sharpie to check that I make the bridge walkway narrow enough for the legs of the bridge to grip the build tightly to the balcony railing.

I then stretched the string vertically to decide how tall I wanted the bridge to rise up from the bottom of the railing and marked that distance as well.

Lastly I laid down the string to mark the length of the bridge but ultimately threw that measurement out and just made it the length of my two foam boards laying end to end. (4 feet)

• mark your height measurement a few times along the length of the board and draw a straight line using the string or a straight edge, or a ruler if you have one. Since I'm making this to look like weathered stone/bricks I'm not too concerned with how straight or accurate I am with my cuts.

• I decided to score the ends of my board to increase the surface area that is getting hot glued and hopefully makes a more secure bond.

I made a mistake of using the HOT setting on my glue gun and it melted into the foam!! Use the warm setting to avoid my mistake :/

• I stuck a couple of toothpicks into the ends and shoved the matching ends together to make a janky dowel joint and held it together for a minute to let the glue cool enough to bind the foam strips together. then repeated so I had two sides to my bridge.

This was kind straight forward, I marked how tall I wanted my arch and how wide I wanted it. Then free-handed a smooth archway connecting everything with some sharp drop-offs near the end because I like how it looks. I then measured the width of the walkway on the scrap pieces of foam, cut, and glued just like the sides of the bridge.

Afterwards I decided what I thought looked good for a depth of the walkway and glued the sides to the walkway and pressed the whole thing together between my legs for a minute

I set the bridge on the railing to make sure it was VERY snugly holding onto the metal, I'm confident that it won't gett knocked off unless there's tornado level winds picking up, and if that happens I'll just bring it inside before hand. Worst case a lightweight piece of foam with so much surface area to weight it'll just dance in the parking lot until I fetch it.

I brought it inside and measured for real for the first time and marked repeating 1.5 inches, 2 inches until I hit the end of the board. I then free styled the depth to something that I liked the profile of. I cut these Merlons out with a box cutter, took a while.

With the cut out scrap I cut them in half lengthwise to glue onto the Merlons to add some extra heft and dimension on the top of the bridge.

This was mildly therapeutic. using anything with a point (a hobby stick for me) I scraped the lines of brickwork into the sides of the bridge.

I made a outline of the arch first so it wasn't too terrible repetitive and put brick lines in there too

after the bricks were imprinted on I found some textury rocks and beat the hell out of the sides of the foam to make some interesting texture, you can really rough it up and I even went over edges so it appeared like a very weathered but well built bridge once painted.

I also scratched and beat up the walkway and battlements to add interest of texture

HAH you thought we would paint, fool! Use something rough or sandpaper if you're fancy and sand off the dangly foam bits

once it's smooth enough for you're liking drown that sucker in black paint thoroughly. Get it in all the cracks because we'll be progressively dry brushing it.

• black base coat
• dry
• gray/grey secondary coat
• dry
• highlight random bricks with muddy red and yellows
• dry
• dry brush with white
• splatter paint some green and highlight with yellow to make moss growing on the sides

Since we know it fits perfectly on the railing, go get some bird seed of your choice and fill up the trough. I put some on the merlons to hopefully attract some birdies but I'll have to see how successful this is at bring in some more life to my balcony. If anything it'll make a great Dungeons and Dragons bridge asset if I start playing again

Hope y'all enjoyed the project details!