DIY Beaded Windchime

hi guys I'm Stacy Gill Ellen at dragonfly designs where creativity meets fun in this video we will walk you through how to create these beautiful wind chimes I really love how you can personalize these colorful wind chimes with your favorite colors to match any of your decor they look equally beautiful inside your home either on a wall or in a window or outside in your garden for this project here are the materials you'll need you can also find the full list of supplies needed to make this project in the description below this video or follow the link to find it on our website so the first thing you want to do when making a wind chime is attaching your monofilament nylon wire which can also be replaced with fishing line or any clear where you have and you want to attach that wire to your stick that you're going to be using to make up the wind chime so how are you gonna do that is you are going to use the crimping method so what you need for crimping is cutting pliers chain nose pliers your string and put beads one make one crimping you want to take your crimp bead and you're gonna beat it onto the string and then you're going to take the end of the wire and you're gonna put that around this stick to create a loop you're going to take the end of the wire and beat it back through the crimp bead and then you're going to take your chain nose pliers and you can string the crimp bead up to make the loop around the stick tighter and then you're going to squeeze that bead flap with your chain nose pliers and so now the string is attached on to the stick so the next step is going to be making these metal elements that link the beaded wire together so as you can see there are array of options that you can choose to make your different spiral designs however I'm going to be showing you how to make this one this one is the most simple one that's I I find the easiest and then once you master this type of swirl you can use whatever techniques you want to make other swirls in order to make this spiral design what you will need is a piece of 18 gauge wire this wire can be copper brass nickel silver which whichever type of wire you want we're using copper today and you want to make sure that this copper is dead soft which means that it will be it's more malleable so the first step is you're going to be taking your round nose pliers and I'm just creating a tiny loop at the end of the wire so I'm just wrapping the copper wire around until I have a loop that looks like this once I've created this loop I'm going to take my chain nose pliers and I'm going to sandwich the loop in between the prongs of the pliers I'm just going to wrap [Music] I'm gonna do that one more time and I think this just creates a really pretty design element okay so once I've wrapped it around two times I've created like a triple spiral at the tip of the wire now what you can do is you can take any big cylinder that you want and wrap this end around so for example um you could take like this plastic bottle and wrap it around the cap you could take your hammer and wrap it around the cylinder of the Hamling part or you could take a ring mandrel so for this I'm going to be using my ring mandrel and I'm going to just wrap the wire around the fattest part of the ring mandrel like so I'm gonna wrap it around again [Music] so what you end up having looks like this then I'm going to be taking my cutting pliers and I'm going to cut off the excess wire after cutting off the excess wire what you're going to do is you're going to create a little loop at the end of the wire similar to this one so you're going to take your round nose pliers and you're going to grab the tip of the wire so you want the wire to be flush with the prongs of the round nose pliers so then you're going to just grab it like so and you're going to create a tiny loop so I just keep rotating my hand create a loop like this and then after I have my loop I bend the wire that you create this until you create this all that you want after designing and making your copper piece what you're going to be doing is you're going to be taking your rubber mallet and you're going to hit the copper swirl so that it works hard into the metal and it what it will end up doing is creating a more stiff swirl we're using a rubber mallet because we don't want to Mar the copper swirl so you're going to take your mouth [Music] now the copper piece is stiff and ready to hang on the wind chime if you understood that step please right got it in the comment section down below and if you have any more questions feel free to add those to your comments and would be happy to help answer them for you all now that you've had fun creating all of your metal design elements it's time for you to add your glass beads remember that in design you always want to choose odd numbers I chose five strings of beads for my wind chime in my first design I created a rainbow pattern and my second design I created an ombre ombre pattern we encourage you to use your imagination and have fun you can add the metal elements in random patterns as you can see in the rainbow version and the ombre version I added them in the center to emphasize the change from dark to light so you can see these ones right here in order to add your metal element onto the string you want to use the same method of crimping so what you're going to do is you're going to take your crimping bead and you're going to put it on the string [Music] once you've strung the crimp bead on you're going to string the wire through a loop in your swirl then you're going to loop the string back through the crimp bead [Music] and through a few other beads tied the access you're going to go like that and then you're going to take your chain nose pliers and you're going to squish the crimp bead flat afterwards you're going to take your cutting pliers and you're going to cut the excess wire off then in order to reattach the string onto the metal element you're going to repeat that same step so you're going to take your crimp aim bead you're gonna put it on the wire and then you're going to loop the wire back through the crimp bead like so and then you want to take your chain nose pliers and you're gonna squeeze that crimp bead flat so because my entire pattern is an ombre pattern and I've been going from dark to light I'm now going to add light blue beads onto the string [Music] once you feed it to your desired length you can add jingle bells or other fun elements such as old peas seashells or driftwood to the bottom in order to do so you want to use the same crimping technique so you're going to attach your bead onto the string and then you're want to take your jingle bell you're going to string it on and then you're going to loop the strings back through the wire so we're going to take your chain nose pliers you're going to squeeze that flat you're just gonna cut off the excess [Music] the last step is to add the ribbon to the stick so you can hang it another idea for hanging it is to use a coat hanger that you add some swirl designs to these wind chimes look nice indoors or out and make great gifts please share how you would customize this project in the comments below thanks for tuning in today if you enjoyed this video please give us a thumbs up and share it with your friends or family make sure you subscribe to our channel so you don't miss out on any future DIY tutorials until next time stay crafty my friends [Music]

Channel: Dragonfly Designs

Views: 70,894

Keywords: windchime, diy

Id: gDN29TgSXw0

Length: 10min 28sec (628 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2019