How To Make a Spiral Wind Spinner – (Or Just a Statement Piece for Your Home)

Have you ever seen a spiral design wind spinner hanging outside a porch or patio area? Those helix shapes look so dope with their “optical illusion” effect as they twist around and around in the breeze!

I wanted one of my own that would be unique, and I didn’t want to cut corners with those plastic ribbon-shape thingys that everyone and their uncle has.

I also made a pdf version of this tutorial that you can follow on your own, too!And by the way, you can definitely hang it indoors if you prefer -it’;l be safe from bad weather and still be a great conversation piece.

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The design looks kinda complicated  I made this  spiral wind spinner from…Dun dun dun…craft sticks!  Yep, just like the ones found in ice cream bars! As a matter of fact, I made this baby out of actual ice cream sticks I’d be saving for months.

Not one to keep great ideas to myself,I’m going to show you how you too can make a diy wind spinner in this really cool “helix” shape.
Loew-Cornell Simply Art Wood Craft Sticks 1000 ct.

DIY Spiral Windspinner Materials List

To put this baby together, you’ll need the most obvious thing – craft sticks:) You don’t need a ton of them for this project. I probably used about 45-55 give or take which is a good amount to shoot for .

This overall design is kind of delicate and the longer you make the spiral the more fragile it might be, so less is more 🙂

Second, other items include: a good waterproof adhesive like e6000, an eyehook for hanging, and some acrylic paint for your sticks. You can make them a solid color, a pretty gradient, whatever you enjoy.

How To Make A Spiral Windspinner – Step By Step

First things first…The inspiration came from this ceramic double-helix sculpture I made as part of a class assignment – you can see it here. But a good blueprint to follow? Tricky…This article served as my guide for doing this project. I wanted to give credit where credit was due because it was hard to find a really good “pattern” to follow.

 

1. First paint your craft sticks. In natural wood condition, you can make them any color combination you want – including fun effects like gradients. I did a vibrant rainbow in a fading gradation.

You’ll want to spread out the sticks on parchment paper so they don’t stick to anything. I used Reeves professional acrylics.. .don’t forget that you have to paint both sides too.

You can get the natural wooden sticks , if you’d like to come up with your own vibrant gradient colors, or If you’d prefer to skip the painting part, there are also colored craft sticks available too! Perfect if you’d like to do a rainbow gradient, which never goes out of style.

200 Pcs Craft Sticks Ice Cream SticksPopsicle Wooden Color Craft SticksColored Craft Sticks Wooden

2. When the paint is dry (disregard step 1 if you want to use pre-colored sticks) take all of your sticks and sort them into bundles of 3. Try to keep the color shades in sync as best you can (like reds to orange, yellows to green, etc.) so the overall design will have a nice color transition.

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Apply some adhesive  in the middle of one stick and place another stick on it but kind of turn it to the side a little. Do the same thing for the third stick. Repeat until all of your sticks are in little bundles of 3.

Psst….Don’t like the idea of dealing with glue? Here is a different approach to putting sticks together 🙂

If you’ve got an odd number remaining, no worries…just bundle what you’ve got left just like the others.

Since you’re going to want to hang up your spiral eventually, we need to get a hanger in there. Now you want to take one mini-bundle of three and insert a hanger for it such as an eyehook.

It will be easier to do this with a small stick bundle, because if you try to insert the eyehook into the finished design you may run the risk of putting stress on your lovely new spiral design.

I used a thumbtack to get it started and then proceeded with the eyehook -easy-peesy 🙂

Now why bundles of 3 you may be asking? Because later on you will be attaching these bundles of 3 to each other and it will not only make the process quicker and easier, but less likely to result in a breakage point.

Which leads me to the nest step…Take all of your bundles of 3 and now take some glue and adhere one bundle of 3 to another one, Repeat this process until you now have a group of bundles with 6 sticks.

If you’re still with me, your bundles should be looking like this by now…They look just like cute little bow ties 🙂

You may want to let a few bundles “set up” awhile at a stretch – that’s OK! Encouraged too, as the further up the spiral design you go, the greater likelihood the earlier glued sticks may get messed up accidentally. So no rush, let a few bundles set up before continuing.

Now…you guessed it! We’re going to repeat this again, and glue a bundle of 6 onto another bundle of 6! At this point you will probably have only a small bunch (I’ve got 3 altogether as you can see)

Now this part is optional, but I wanted to add a little something extra to my design and I was thinking about maybe a few bling/bead embellishments, so I added another eyehook to another mini-bundle about the same time as the first one. (I told you this would be a fun project!)

Secondly, even with the best of glues, you still have to help it along. I ended up using these office clippy’s to clamp them temporarily

I kinda felt like my first paint job was a little sloppy (I did intend to make it a quick-and-dirty approach) so I gave my final design a good repaint and then later on a coat of decoupage glue.

Definitely apply a layer of Mod Podge (or something similar) to your finished work  and it’ll give your completed spiral wind spinner an extra layer of strength and protection, since it will be gracing your yard it will get some exposure to the elements.

Before hanging her up, I added some beads attached to the bottom eyehook via fishing line, and viola!

Conclusion

You have now learned the way to make an awesome wind spinner – now hang that baby up somewhere and let it make a statement on your patio, back porch, garden area, what have you!

It probably took me about a week tops to make this thing but it was worth it. I’ve got it out in the backyard patio area now – the backyard is shadier and if we should get some bad weather it’s in a more secure area.

I hope this will be a fun project for you to follow along with if you’re anything like me and you want a great way to make a wind spinner that will be anything but generic looking; after all it is called “yard art” for good reason!