Week 18: Garden Candy

My project this week is really two-fold: a whimsical wind chime made out of old forks and a mason jar lid and a tin dragonfly to adorn the potted plants. Together though, these things make for lovely garden eye candy.

I've been in love with wind chimes of all kinds for as long as I can remember. I suppose I've known about wind chimes crafted out of old silverware for years but I was really inspired when I passed a house on my power walks for the past two weeks that has the most funky spoon wind chime hanging from an old wooden ruler on the front porch.

For the wind chime, I gathered together an old mason jar lid, five vintage forks that I've had for years, a strip of glittering emerald green rhinestones and oodles and oodles of beads. Lucky for me, and no surprise really, that I have boxes and bins of seed beads that I've collected over the years.



To get the project started I had Breen drill holes in each fork and in the mason jar lid. I decided that my wind chime would be even more eye catching if I beaded each string attached to the forks with metallic silver seed beads and blue crystal accents. In terms of stringing material, I ended up using a very durable beading thread that I had on hand. Perhaps when I make another I'll try fishing line. I started one fork and had to pack up the other four plus all my supplies to take on the road to Breen's triathlon in the mountains.

Lucky for me (but not so lucky for Breen) it rained all morning during the race which gave me time to sit in the car during parts of the race and finish the other forks.

I then attached them all to the mason jar lid.

On the lid I glued the strip of green rhinestones around it.

I'm so happy with my new set of wind chimes and they make me smile every time I glance at them near the plants on the front porch. I can't wait for a nice windy night when I can lay in bed and hear the happy clanging of the forks.

Now for the dragonfly. A few weeks ago I had already worked with recycling aluminum cans when I made flower pins. This week I cut dragonfly shapes out of the soda cans and used E6000 epoxy to attach them to a cut piece of shirt hanger. Just poke them in a plant!


What did you learn this week?

Week 12: Blooming Beer Cans

With Spring finally here, my beer cans are blooming! This week, I made big funky flower pins out of beer cans. My original idea for this project was found in a craft book that Breen bought me recently. In that book were dragonflies made out of beer cans that were poking out of flower pots. I was all set to make those dragonflies but somehow I stumbled across “soda can flower pins” and they made me smile so much that I just had to make a few of those instead. I had a bag of empty beer cans that Breen’s nephews saved for me when we saw them on Easter.

These flowers were so incredibly easy to make. I would give you the step by step instructions here but I think the easiest thing to do is to GO OVER HERE where the steps are clearly laid out with photos. I can tell you that aluminum is super light weight and cuts easily with regular scissors. I had fun using the beads and wire which added great details to my flowers. I read reviews where some people were concerned about the flowers being sharp but I can assure you that I haven’t found it to be a problem at all. However, I did buy an awesome can of green tea from the Japanese store but realized that it was made from steel and way too hard to cut and I do think that the steel would have been VERY sharp. When I make more of these flower pins, I’m going to use aluminum cans only. There could be so many possibilities for these flowers using all sorts of colorful soda and beer cans with different color beads. Do you remember the Adirondack Alcohol Inks that I used on a previous tile project? Well those inks work on aluminum too. What a great and stylish way to recycle!

Here were the flowers before they became flowers:

Here’s a peek at what the flower looks like before the beads and wire were added:

Here they are happily pinned to my jean jacket:



Check out the detail of the “pistons” made out of the wire:


Don't forget to go over to The Painted House to see what I did this week for The Farmers Market and the Find. You won't be disappointed!

Also our dear fellow participant, Carrie over at Kablooey, is on vacation this week but is going to try to get her project posted. Go over here to check :)

What did you do this week?