How To Make a Spiral Wind Spinner For Your Yard or Garden! 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.
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.
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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.
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How To Make A Spiral Windspinner – Step By Step
First things first…I can’t say I came out of the gate swinging with this thing! I made some mistakes along the way trying to “get” the intricacies of the design down – but this article served as the best guide for doing this project as far as finding a really good “pattern” to follow. I have paraphrased the main steps below so you can follow along.
Painting the Sticks
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. If you’d prefer to skip the painting part, there are also colored craft sticks
available too!
You’ll want to spread out the sticks on parchment paper so they don’t stick to anything. I used Reeves professional acrylics..I would advise you not to use spray paint, as I tried that once and it made the sticks blow everywhere – don’t forget that you have to paint both sides too.
Sort and Bundle Sticks
2. When the paint is dry, 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.
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 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 create a hanger. Take one mini-bundle and insert an eyehook like this:
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.
Now 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. Allow them to dry before proceeding.
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. Here’s how the stick bundles will progress as you put them together:
Now you can finish the attachment of them and glue them together. I would let them set up for a few days to be sure the glue is fully cured before hanging it.
Before hanging it up, I applied a coat of spray sealant to it, and then just for fun, added some beads attached to the bottom eyehook via fishing line, and viola!
Another Way – (Without Glue!)
UPDATE: 7/2/18 This probably took about a week. Now I want to show you another way you can attach the sticks together. If you want to follow the above technique, that’s fine, too, but in my opinion this way is more stable and will keep all the sticks on an axis point. My first one had a little breakage caused by various stress points. This is how I put my second (and eventually, third) spinner together.
Again, you’ll need around 50-75 craft sticks, paint, a length of slightly heavy (about 12-14 gauge) wire about 2 feet in length, cordless drill and small bit, beads.
I had another collection of popsicle sticks saved up for this. Before getting started, I washed all my sticks in warm water and Murphy’s Oil soap (that stuff is amazing) since they still had some discoloring from the respective pops I was enjoying previously.
If you have kids who enjoy popsicle stick crafts, this could be a great summer project.,…(but you should probably handle or supervise the drilling part ??
Let’s Get Started
Again, paint your sticks (or not, if you want to use pre-colored ones) and allow them to dry. OK, it’s power tool time! You will need a drill and a very small bit for the next steps, as well as something safe to drill over.
Popsicle sticks are approximately 4 and three fourths of an inch in length. I want to put the hole in the middle obviously but need to measure to find the sweet spot. I thought at first: “Is there a better way to mark 1 stick and use it as a template, rather than measuring each one over and over?”
I had an ace up my sleeve:…I measured the first stick and then made the measurement onto this wood block here I was using to have a protective place for drilling:
So, I drilled the first hole in that one stick and then used it as a proxy for all the other sticks.
Make sure you have a protected work space. If you’re a cheap-o upcycler like me, do what I do and grab a scrap of wood. I found this and a few others just lying by this house under construction and I knew it was a no-brainer to take them. You do not need much pressure at all to go through something light like popsicle sticks so it fits the bill perfectly.
Feel free to steal that hack – you’ll thank me later. Next get a real tiny bit in place, and you’re ready to drill the holes. Only light pressure and it takes like two seconds per stick.
I timed the above step (out of curiosity) and it probably took about half an hour for all 48 sticks to be drilled. The hole doesn’t need to be any bigger than that left by a thumbtack…Blow off the remaining dust -there will be some remaining.
Threading the Sticks Together
Get your strand of wire, as we’re going to thread the sticks through. Don’t forget, first, to sort them in color groups so the pattern comes out right, and thread the sticks onto the wire one by one.
Allow at least two inches of wire below the first sticks. You can crimp the end so the sticks don’t fall off, and use a bead, too, as a little embellishment, like I did. (Can you tell I LOVE Outshine fruit bars?) Sorry to digress but they’re dee-lish, which is why I have so many sticks ?? Notice how I’ve got them strategically stacked with that logo upside down so it doesn’t show.
When you have gotten all of your popsicle sticks threaded through add some more pretty beads to finish it off and lessen any slack between the sticks. They need to be able to move freely but still be close enough together to form the pretty spiral pattern.
Your windspinner may look messy at first – That’s normal! You may need to tinker with the sticks a little to nudge them into that spiral pattern. But once you do the pattern WILL stay put.
Apply some dabs of glue at certain points to further secure your design.
Hanging Your Spinner
Now get yourself some fishing line (Don’t use dental floss, I only use it in a pinch – it’s not strong enough).Cut off anough length (about two feet is good) and wrap through the end of the wired part of the top, and tighten it.
I also used a fishing line sinker to add a little weight to it as it hangs. When you have gotten a secure loop now it is ready to hang it up! Spray it with waterproof sealant to protect it before you hang it outside.
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!What do you think? Does this method sounds easier than gluing the sticks?
P.S…I also made another one like this with a “cool color” scheme – greens, blues, purples…kind of an inversion of the one above that has all warm colors. I thought I’d share it too! I had to hold it slightly, as the resulting photo looks blurry when it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing – spinning.
Thanks, and good luck, let me know if you try this, and how it turns out!
