Ardissa
Meeting neighbors
Get it?? Orbit? Out of this world?? Arrgh har har har...
errr umm...*ahem*...
...so I finished up this orbit-almost-atom bird plaything last week and wanted to share!
This is what I used...
3 metal hoops from a HobbyLobby that just opened up near me, 50 feet of 1/4" rope from CaBirdNerds, all natural cotton kitchen twine and my trusty tape measure that I've had since I was in the Craft Club in 4th grade.
The kitchen twine was to wrap the joints where the hoops would cross to make sure the metal wouldn't be accessible thru the larger rope.
I'm not worried about my birds chewing through this, but for bigger birds or chewers I would use stainless steel hoops.
I wrapped the joints and also attached TWO hoops together with the twine. The 3rd hoop is sitting out at the moment, I added it later.
Then I moved on to wrapping with the 1/4" rope...
When I reached a joint I stopped wrapping and cut the rope leaving a long tail to be knotted with the other sides, I did this for all four sides.
When all four sides were done I was left with 4 long tails at each of the 2 joints, I tied the 4 taills together with a square knot...
The picture below shows the square knot tightened and in the middle is where the twine I wrapped earlier is showing, if I hadn't wrapped with the twine...the metal hoop would be showing here in the very center...
You really could skip the twine step and just wrap with the thicker rope until no metal was visible, but I think the extra twine was worth the effort to make it neater and use less rope. Also it helped keep the rings square and gave the rope a better grip when I began wrapping with it.
I tied off the rope ends at the joints and added beads...
What did I do with the 3rd metal ring, you say? I took it and jammed it over the thing pictured above, then I wrapped it with the rope. I used the same method of wrapping in thin twine first where there would be a joint and then using the thick rope and wrapping until I got to a joint. At the joint I left a long tail and cut the rope then tied the rope together when done wrapping.
And this is what I got!
Hung up in our workout area in the basement...
Total cost? Less than $15 (actually...$12.50 plus cost of beads). Yaaay me!
errr umm...*ahem*...
...so I finished up this orbit-almost-atom bird plaything last week and wanted to share!
This is what I used...
3 metal hoops from a HobbyLobby that just opened up near me, 50 feet of 1/4" rope from CaBirdNerds, all natural cotton kitchen twine and my trusty tape measure that I've had since I was in the Craft Club in 4th grade.
The kitchen twine was to wrap the joints where the hoops would cross to make sure the metal wouldn't be accessible thru the larger rope.
I'm not worried about my birds chewing through this, but for bigger birds or chewers I would use stainless steel hoops.
I wrapped the joints and also attached TWO hoops together with the twine. The 3rd hoop is sitting out at the moment, I added it later.
Then I moved on to wrapping with the 1/4" rope...
When I reached a joint I stopped wrapping and cut the rope leaving a long tail to be knotted with the other sides, I did this for all four sides.
When all four sides were done I was left with 4 long tails at each of the 2 joints, I tied the 4 taills together with a square knot...
The picture below shows the square knot tightened and in the middle is where the twine I wrapped earlier is showing, if I hadn't wrapped with the twine...the metal hoop would be showing here in the very center...
You really could skip the twine step and just wrap with the thicker rope until no metal was visible, but I think the extra twine was worth the effort to make it neater and use less rope. Also it helped keep the rings square and gave the rope a better grip when I began wrapping with it.
I tied off the rope ends at the joints and added beads...
What did I do with the 3rd metal ring, you say? I took it and jammed it over the thing pictured above, then I wrapped it with the rope. I used the same method of wrapping in thin twine first where there would be a joint and then using the thick rope and wrapping until I got to a joint. At the joint I left a long tail and cut the rope then tied the rope together when done wrapping.
And this is what I got!
Hung up in our workout area in the basement...
Total cost? Less than $15 (actually...$12.50 plus cost of beads). Yaaay me!
I have been thinking of trying my hand at making one and wasn't sure where to start.