Homemade Yard Decorations Ideas

Build a Herd

• Create a personal herd of cows, a clowder of cats or a flock of out-of-place birds--such as pelicans, peacocks and storks. Make them comical or realistic. Search through clip art books and clip art sites to determine their "personalities." Instead of making them flat from a single piece of plywood, design them in flat pieces that stack. For example, the cow's head could be cut as one flat piece, the body a second and the tail a third. Paint them and attach the flat head to the flat body and the flat tail to the back of the flat body. This gives the yard decoration some dimension without becoming a full 3-dimensional item. Hire an art student with an ability to draw cartoons and 2-dimensional figures to help design, cut and paint the yard art.

Create a Garden

• Build a garden that never needs to be pruned. Pinwheel flowers are easy to make using craft sticks. Paint and crisscross the sticks like stars to create flowers. Glue the sticks together and decorate them with paint, sea glass and beads. Or use cut and painted metal to make flowers.

  Find photographs, clip art or drawings of lady bugs and snails. Enlarge them using a copy machine or computer graphics program and use them as patterns for painted plywood yard art. Attach each item to metal yard stakes (with predrilled holes for easy attachment) to place them into the ground. Place a larger garden inside a garden bed outlined with a short (1-foot) decorative white picket fence border. Seal yard art with a non-yellowing sealer for protection against weathering.

Mark a Path

• Mark a favorite walking path through the yard with yard art flowers, birds or small animals. Highlight the art using glow-in-the-dark paint to add luminosity to the path at night. Attach each item to a metal yard stake for easy placement along the path. Coloring book images provide a source for drawings of birds, butterflies, small animals and flowers. Use them to create the patterns for plywood cutouts. Use a bucket or basket filled with yard art to mark the start and end of paths or entries into other areas of the yard. The containers can be perforated through the bottom to allow metal stakes to be pushed through and into the ground.