Fourth of July Wind Chime

Happy Fourth of July to everyone!!

I have had this idea percolating in my brain for a bit. Thankfully it worked out...and I finished it just in time to gift it to my dear Sweet Mother!

My Mother is in love with all things Patriotic! So, when I came up with this idea, I knew I had to give it to her. I am thankful to my parents for instilling such a passion for our country! They will be attending a swearing in ceremony in the morning, on the 4th. We all don't go with them, but we live vicariously through them when they do this. We love to hear our Dad talk about the heart warming stories of the people who are getting sworn in to become Citizens of The United States of America. On the 4th of July they do a really big session of it, so it's a really neat thing to attend!

So, this project being patriotic, and out of materials from Home Depot...well, it couldn't get better than that for me. I LOVE HOME DEPOT!! Seriously.

I bought a thin long plumbers pipe from Home Depot. I had an employee cut it in half for me. Trust me, you'll need to do this because it was 10 feet long to begin with. You will hit things if you try putting that in a cart and moving around the store with it. I then, just perused the store until I found metal sheets. I actually bought 2 different ones because I couldn't decide which one I would like better. I went with the bigger one because it was thinner and I thought the size was more appropriate to go with the size of pipe I got. The metal sheet was 12in X 8in. I already had the red, white, and blue spray paint from my carnival projects! You need to wash/wipe down all the metal. I even used a green scrubber pad to make sure to get all the grease/dirt off.

Let them dry completely and then spray paint one of the pipes white, one red, and the metal sheet blue (both sides). After they all dried, I cut the pipes up. Based on your supplies, you will have to do the math. For mine, I cut two lengths 10 in and two lengths 17 in. I did this out of the red and then out of the white pipes. I also cut my blue metal sheet in half so that it was 6 in X 8in. You also will need something to go along the top. For this I used a plastic tube that we already had.
Next I ground the ends down to make the ends flat.
Making sure to smooth around the edges because they can get sharp otherwise.
Next I drilled holes into each of the pipes. I drilled the holes 1/2 in from the ends. You want a top hole and a bottom one (so drill all the way down). I first drilled a pilot hole with a smaller bit. Then, I used a thicker bit.

After you use the thick bit, your pipe will look like this and be very dangerous.
So, use an even bigger drill just to counter sink the holes and leave them smooth.

Next, I drilled 4 holes along one side of my blue sheet metal. Again, I went 1/2 in from the edge. These are what the shorter stripes will hang from. On the opposite side of the metal, I also drilled to holes (to hang from the top). Notice that I did this step with scrap wood underneath.
Use your scrap wood to do your math and figure your spacing! ;)
Next, I drilled all my holes into my top pipe piece. This is where my wood written math came in handy.
Take ALL your pipe pieces and repaint for touch ups. Don't you love homemade contraptions for all the weird projects? ;)
Another great invention for painting my top pipe piece. I attached a dowel into a drill. Slid my plastic pipe onto it. Then sprayed each of the colors onto the pipe. The point of this is to make a swirl down the pipe. You pull the trigger on the drill to swirl the pipe, while spraying down the length of the pipe with each color. Pretty cool.
Now that your blue metal has been repainted for touch ups, and had a chance to dry, you can add your stars. I made up a pattern, in the size I needed, and cut out the stars to make a template.
Then, I sprayed the stars white. This worked out pretty well.

Now, you attach everything together. We actually have a machine that etches dog tags, so we have lots of heavy duty necklace chain that I used for this. I just strung it all together. Here's my finished project.

Rebecca

By the way, this is finished it on both sides so that you can view it from either side since it is a wind chime!