Recycled wind chime

Back from holidays in Poland the first week in London was more busy then ever .
While Ela stayed with the family for the firs time we doing our best to refurbish her room from the scratch ...
But that's another story , when it's done I will share it with you one day don't you worry ;)

Meanwhile I will dig some of our older crafts .
The first would be something we made to decorate a play area of our garden , a recycled wind chime .
Very easy to make with kids , we did this on rainy day before Summer and it did brighten up our moods :)

What did we used for our little project :
large colourful wooden beads
mixture of large rings and disc beads
pony beads
plastic bottle cups
drinking straws
thick fishing line
viscose string
bamboo stick

We love crafting with stuff we already have around the house .
Or stuff we saved instead of throwing away just in case we need it one day , like ...

plastic bottle cups :)
Those green funny ones are from vitamin fizzy tablets tubes.

Because I am making jewellery too and often upcycling old parts I do collect many jewellery findings and broken necklaces brought in charity shops ;)
They are often very cheap and then useful in many ways!
Here we have some large plastic disc beads and mixture of oval metal , wooden and plastic rings.
You can use anything else , large buttons, key rings or wooden curtain rings for example . Anything large ;)



Then bamboo stick and green viscose string you already know from our quick diy kids tent ;)
Also strong and stretchy fishing line along with some plastic pony beads.

Some vibrant large wooden beads , brought in Tiger shop (gosh how I love this one!)



I also decided to add drinking straws , they added good length to our chime as other stuff we gather wouldn't be enough.
We then cut them to many different pieces.

To start I cut off eight long (approx 100cm) pieces of fishing line and tied one disc bead or ring to each end.
Then we were ready to string our colourful stuff :)

 Those cute little hands :)

Thick fishing line works better then any other thread , it's stiff and easy to manage by a child.

That's one of eight and the longest of all :)
Let the child choose the order of beaded parts , its more fun ;)

So, we made eight strands all different length.
Then I tied them all to the bamboo stick along with the long piece of green viscose string ...

The weather wasn't great that day so we hung it indoor at first.

Than one day we found the right place :)

We have no tree which would be a dream place for the chime but our boring fence needed some love too :)
*By saying that now after a one year of chime hanging in the most sunny spot I regret it and can tell you - shady place is the best as the colours faded from the sun.
So we might make a new one this year :)
I can see this looking good in small balcony , front garden or even child's room.

If you prefer something noisy for you tree then why not to use some shells , spoons or old keys.
Our intent was a silent decoration ;)

Happy crafting!