Glass Ball and Wire Cane Tops

Our garden backs onto the countryside with a small river running past, every summer beautiful dragonflies and damselflies fill every available space and when the seasons change we start to miss them. So we came up with the idea of making a small piece of sculpture to brighten the garden during the cold winter months using some of the parts from a broken mobile.

This is the broken mobile... I kept the parts as we have a passion for recycling and reusing things but the cane tops can just as easily be made with garden wire and glass balls or marbles if you fancy making some yourself.

The first thing we did was make the body of the dragonfly, my husband used a bar with a hole in to hold the wire still, but a cane works just as well. Put the end of the wire into the hole and keep winding the wire round until it starts to resemble a large spring and could fit the required amount of marbles in. We have used six marbles in total.

With the marbles pushed into the spring it automatically starts to look like the body of a dragonfly, you can then use pliers to spiral the wire at the end to finish it off nicely, leaving a little excess wire at the head end to attach to the cane. We have used a larger marble for the head.

We have made the wings with a slightly thinner garden wire because it is so much easier to shape and can be bought very cheaply. Once you have your wing shape twist the wire together to hold it in place remembering to leave enough spare wire on the underside of the wings to fix onto the body of your dragonfly.

A little detail was added using very thin wire and beads, this was wound around the edges of the wings to fix them in place and create a representation of the veining on the dragonflies wings.

Then all that's left to do is fix the wings to the body by wrapping the long piece of wire around the body. A glass bead can be fixed to the insects thorax to cover the knotted wire using hot glue or resin. In the photograph above you can see some of the other things we have made using the glass balls and wire from the broken mobile.

These garden cane tops have been made in a similar way to the dragonfly using a simple spiral to hold the glass balls and adding a few beads as a finishing touch. I have left the bottom end of the wire straight to slide into the end of a bamboo cane but they can also be spiralled to slip over the top of the cane.

Here is the finished dragonfly in the garden, the wire at the front of it's head was straightened and slid into the top of a bamboo cane, which is hidden by the bush. As the body has been made using a spring shape and it is only fixed to the cane at the front it has given the sculpture a subtle movement which has enchanted the children.

These are some of the cane tops which remind us of little moons orbiting planets and definitely liven up a dull looking cane. A small magical touch to add a little cheer to the gardens in the winter.

As there have been a few reports of fires caused by people having glass on sunny window ledges we will be using these to brighten pots in shady corners.

Wool Wrapped Wire Snowflakes

Every year we try to make some new decorations for our tree, this year we have been so busy I'm only just getting around to posting them here. One of my favourite things were the wool wrapped wire snowflakes... so simple but they look so lovely on the tree.

First I made the basic shape of a snowflake with wire, any wire will do as it will be covered, I've just used cheap garden wire. My husband soldered three lengths of wire in the middle to hold them together but it is possible just to wind the wire to get the basic shape. The smaller pieces of wire on each arm are just wrapped around the larger wire, once the wool is added they will fix better in place.

Then it's time to wrap the entire wire snowflake in wool, I used white for snow. I did this in one continuous piece starting from the centre and going down each arm in turn then back to the centre so that it is covered with two layers of wool, before going down the next arm. This made it easier to fix the end of the wool when the snowflake is completely covered with just one spot of glue.

When the wool wrapping is finished your snowflake will look like the photograph above. I decided to add a tiny pearl bead to the end of each wire like a little stopper, adding a spot of glue to hold it on. This not only looks pretty it also covers the wire ends in case it is a little scratchy and helps to hold all the wool in place.

Here is the finished snowflake after a quick spray with glitter spray, ready to have a loop added to hang on the tree. These look gorgeous hanging on the tree, are very simple and quick to make and we think they look quite stylish too.

We would like to take the chance to wish you all a Merry Yule / Christmas from all of us here.

Corn Husk Beads

I'm back to show you my daughter's corn husk recycling craft. The idea came from the paper beads we all used to make as children, the dried corn husks looked like a similar shape to the paper template, so we thought it was worth trying.

First take your dried out corn husk, which is an elongated triangle shape, and start to roll it around a skewer as shown above. A little glue may help it stick here. Carry on rolling right to the end of the corn husk and glue it down.

At this stage it looks a little like a cotton bud. You now need to slip it off the skewer carefully to preserve the hole in the center as this is where you will thread your bead later.

Once we had made as many as we needed they can be trimmed to neaten up the ends and to the size you require.

My daughter chose to paint them in beautiful colours with some metallic paints, they could also be varnished if you want to make them more hard wearing.

After the beads were dry they were threaded onto a piece of thin elastic, just the right size for a bracelet or necklace.

This is the finished bracelet, very pretty colours... I think she did a wonderful job. If you don't have corn husks to use have a go at the traditional paper bead making... it's a lot of fun.