DIY - How to: Keep Birds Out of Your Strawberries

Paint a bunch of small stones and place them in and around the strawberry plants. The birds will dive for them and learn they are NOT nice and juicy.  By the time the berries are ripe the birds will not bother the real fruits.

Collect some strawberry shaped stones. Wash well with soap and water and let dry overnight.

When it's time to paint, I like to work on about a dozen at a time so that the paint on the first one is dry by the time I'm finished that particular step on the 12th. one. I use acrylics.

 Step 1 of painting:

To achieve a bright red result, undercoat stone with white.Paint half your stone at a time,let dry, turn over and paint other half.One coat of white is sufficient. The white undercoat makes the red "pop out".

Basecoat with any red of your choice, letting the first side dry before continuing to the other side.  You will probably need two coats of red.
In these examples I used Delta Ceramcoat Fire Red.

Look at your "berry" and decide which end would be best suited for the hull. One end is usually less pointed and that is where the hull would go. With Hauser Medium Green, or any medium green of your choice, base in the hull, making 6 or 7 pointed leaves that come about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way down the strawberry. Try not to make your hull so small that you can't see it from a side view.

With Hauser Dark Green, or any dark green, outline each hull leaf, put in a central vein on each, and add a circle at the top center.

With Hauser Light Green, or any light green, randomly add  highlights here and there.  No need to wash out your brush between greens..mixing them is more interesting.

With Black, using a liner brush,randomly add the little pockets where the seeds grow.
Avoid the temptation to add too many.
Also, keep them small so they don't end up looking like watermelon seeds.

 Again, using a liner brush, place a dot of off white in each little pocket to represent the seed.  I used Ceramcoat Light Ivory.

The final step is to give your berry 2 or 3 coats of varnish..either in spray form or with a wipe-on product called Final Coat.  The varnish protects the paint from chipping,gives depth to the colour,and it keeps the paint from sticking and lifting when you pile the berries in a basket.