A blog about bringing beauty, meaning, and soul into home and garden

Feeling creative with old metal parts?  When you get inspired next, try making your own recycled metal sculptures.   It’s fun and relatively easy, especially if you plan to make them with fasteners instead of soldering.   My artistic and handy friends showed me the steps, and I will now show you.  They made these pieces in one afternoon, at a ten year old child’s birthday party  – so it truly is possible!

They started with collecting supplies.  Start with your own recycling bin.  Then go to your local recycling centers and rebuilding centers for small metal parts.  For the odd part, you may need the hardware store.  Here are some ideas of what to collect:  old tuna cans, springs, copper strapping, shower drain screens, nuts, bolts, copper pipe, lock washers, electric metal clips, and odd office supplies like brass paper fasteners and metal paper clips.

My friends came up with the brilliant idea of using aluminum gutter guard, and rolled this screen to make a body for the sculpture.  This allowed them to use simple brass fasteners like you have around the house to attach body parts to the screen.

They used two part metal epoxy to attach the body to the metal base so that the sculpture would stand upright.  Feet were made from various plumbing flanges and old door knob rosettes.

For arms, they used the flexible, brass spring door stops, with hands made out of  alligator clips or bungy cord ends.  These were attached with either glue, fasteners or metal wire.  You can buy cheap metal wire in the different metal types such as copper, brass, aluminum, tin.  Using the different metal colors in your sculpture adds visual interest and artistic appeal!

For the head, the kids came up with great ideas.  Here, one child used a steel drain screen from a shower, attached to the open end of a tuna can.  The kids could easily add features to the faces of their sculptures by attaching parts with wire through the holes of the screen.  I like the sewing spool for the mouth.  Some made hair with bent curvy wire.  They also used the spirals off old notebooks for hair.

Mostly these sculptures were meant to be inside pieces rather than garden art, but making garden art is possible too.  The possibilities are endless and the creative process is more inspiring when you know you are reusing, recycling, and being thrifty!