We have recently moved to a place where it is always windy.  I’m not talking about a breeze every now and again… I’m talking enough wind most of the time to do things like rip the car door out of your hand if you’re not careful when you open it at the gas station with enough force to put a huge dent in that very door…

The kids, on the other hand, don’t have such dilemmas with the wind.  They fully enjoy the wind – they fly kites, they make their pool towels into full-blown superman capes and they love, absolutely love, pinwheels.

Thought it would be fun to make some pinwheels for the kids with some of the yummy goodies from the July main kit.  These are really quick and easy to make!!

Here’s the supplies you need (this is just one of the many ways to make these)…  6×6 paper pieces, adhesive, beads, wire (any paperclip will do), eyelets, ruler, pencil, Crop-a-dile, scissors, dowel rods (I used some pieces of old wood).

First, if you’re not using double sided paper, use the adhesive (spray works well) to piece the papers together so the nice sides are facing out.  Then draw diagonal lines, corner to corner, on one side of the paper to mark not only the center but also where to cut the pieces.  Mark a tick approximately 2/3 in on the lines (I used the eyelet container as it was easily accessible).  This will indicate just how far in on the paper to cut… off you go, snip, snip!

After all the cuts are made, use the Crop-a-dile (a hole punch will work) and punch holes in the center and on one corner of each triangle cut.  Then, run an eyelet through the holes, pulling the corners in to attach one at a time.

Once the eyelet has been threaded through the holes, use the Crop-a-dile to finish the eyelet, careful not to smash the puffy pieces of the pinwheel too much.  After this is done, thread a bead onto the wire that has a curl on the end and thread the wire through the eyelet.  The eyelet will allow for smooth spinning of the pinwheel, if they are used for more than just decoration.  Here, straight pins can also be used if the pinwheels don’t need to actually spin.  Another bead can be run though on the back of the wheel, as well, to give it some space away from the holder.

I used random pieces of old wood the kids found rather than the standard dowel rods.  There are two ways of attaching the wire for something like this…  You can either wrap the wire or you can drill a hole through the wood and run the wire through the wood.  Either way, be sure that there is enough clearance for the wheel to spin by adjusting the tightness and the angle of the wire.

Here’s a fun little way to display these in the house…

These could also be made out of 12×12 papers, attached to dowels and used to decorate a sidewalk path for a garden party or even a bouquet of them for the kids to play with…  That’s my plan for when the sun rises again.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 7:43 pm by amy and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.