Build Your Own Wind Chime
A wind chime in a light breeze can be doubly delightful, as it's both soothing to the ear and a pleasure to behold, and you can build your own a number of ways! When you build your own wind chime, the materials you select for its construction help determine how it will sound. Choose metal for a light, tinkling melody, ceramic pieces for subtle bell-like tones, or wood for a hypnotic, earthy rhythm. You can mix and match materials to produce a new sound unique to your creation. Customize the look of the wind chime by assembling it from found objects that exude funky, homegrown charm, or design it carefully with a matched set of specially selected or engineered pieces. Either way, you need not spend a fortune to create a one-of-a-kind wind chime that is both eye-catching and musically satisfying.
Fork & Spoon Fun
Gather four spoons and one fork that you've retired from your flatware collection. Drill a hole through the handle of each utensil, using a power drill fitted with an 1/8-inch metal-cutting bit. Make sure to wear safety goggles while drilling. Use needle-nose pliers to bend the tines of the fork outward, splaying them in different directions. Then bend the tip of each tine all the way around to form a small loop or eye. Tie one spoon to the end of each of the fork's tines, using clear fishing line. Embellish each strand to suit your taste, using bright beads, crystals, or bits of colored glass. Hang the finished chime by the fork handle, using another piece of fishing line.
Terra Cotta Symphony
Assemble a collection of clay flowerpots in two or three of the smallest available sizes. Using sturdy hemp or nylon garden twine, and a series of half-inch round wooden beads, string two or three clay pots of different sizes upside down onto each length of cord, with a bead acting as a stop below the drain hole of each pot. When you hoist a string by one end, the pots should dangle like bells. Arrange the bell strings around the rim of a 6- or 8-inch wooden embroidery hoop, tying them in place and securing them with the hoop's clamping mechanism. The clay-pot bells should hang close enough to one another that the movement of the wind causes them to touch and chime. Decorate the wind chime with feathers, strings of seashells, polished stones and other natural treasures.
Musical Bamboo
Using a handsaw, cut a length of bamboo to the desired size for your wind chime hanger. Cut three to eight more pieces of varying lengths; these are the chiming parts, and the number depends on the length of the hanger piece. Measure and make equidistant marks on the hanger unit, one mark for each chime piece. Carefully use the saw to score a slight groove at each mark. Drill a 1/8-inch hole near one end of each chime, thread a string through it, and secure it to one of the grooves on the hanger, leaving enough string to let all the chimers swing freely. Thread another length of string through the hanger piece, leaving enough slack on both ends to tie at the top for hanging.
