What do you Know?

Q: What does a Slinky, a PET bottle and ribbon have in common?


A: A YARD SPINNER

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I had all those PET Beads...Not exactly charm bracelet material. I thought maybe the art teacher could use them for the younger kids at school for embellishing...I mean How many times Have you seen macaroni used as beads, right? But in the mean time I thought this would be a good use for a few for me.

My youngest grandson had a metal slinky that lasted all of 6 hours ( If that) My daughter asked me If I wanted it after it was all twisted and tangled and at first i said NO. But after about an hour I had this nagging feeling to go rescue it, ( Ah the packrat on my shoulder) so we ripped open the trash bag and fished out this tangled mess of wire. I took my heavy duty metal snips and snipped it down to a few coils at a time, discarding the stuff that could not be saved ( not a lot). I have tons of ribbon and ribbon remnants that my craft store was selling...A bag of remnants for a dollar...yup a whole buck $1.00 Cha-ching!

After drilling holes in the ends with my NEW hole punch for metal I took E-6000 ( the one with the small metal nose) and stuck the nose into the bead and gave it a small squirt to hold the bead in place. I did this around the coil. Then I took some ribbons ( about 6) and gave them a small tack with needle and thread to hold them together.

I wrapped some silver copper wire around the end and came up with a loop.

I attached Fishing spinners to each end.

Attached the ribbon.

Used 30 LB test fishing line to attach the other end to the tree limb and .....

VIOLA SPINNER!

Plastic Beads Tut

I did a Tut for my PET Posies ( here) I used the bottom of my bottle. The rest of my bottle I cut into strips ( cut around the bottle not lengthwise) I wrapped them around a pair of needle nose pliers and hit them with a heat gun. This has been done by others by dipping them in boiling water as well, although I never tried that method.

For color I used transparency paint, & nail polish ( left it dry before rolling it and heating it) I also used scrap book paper and photos that I ran thru my shredder and made into strips that I cut down to size and layed them in the middle before rolling.