This session, I started actually making the wind chimes!

The first thing that I did was to use a tool to find the center of my circular pieces, so that I can drill holes there.

Next, I drilled holes in all the places that needed holes! Including but not limited to: the center piece, the big & small knockers, and the individual chime pieces. I cut up the metal tube and the wooden stick, and then made holes on the ends of the chime pieces for the string to pass through. I used sandpaper to sand down the rough edges so that my wind chime wouldn’t become a safety hazard.

Then, I started adding the string! My original plan was to tie on the string and just leave it like that – however, soon I realized that it would make the chime parts rotate in weird angles, and that would likely negatively impact the weight distribution of the wind chime.

So instead I decided to make little loops with the string so that the chimes can still be upright while being connected by the string. I used hot glue to connect the ends of the string for the loops and used the string to connect the individual chime pieces, as displayed below.

I used a similar technique and more string to connect the chime pieces to the top piece. For the knocker pieces, I tied two knots on a longer piece of string and attached it to the top piece. I also decided to connect the extra string above the top piece from the chime pieces to the extra string from the knocker pieces, so that the wind chime would be more balanced. Then, after I assembled all the pieces, I added some beads and a paper tail for decoration, the wind chime is structurally complete and functional!

There are still some changes that I would like to make – namely, I want to add that painted gradient that I originally planned for the chime pieces, and I also want to add some cool patterns to the paper tail (perhaps some cloud imagery, to keep with the theme?). However, this is the last bit of class time that I have to work on my project, so I would have to do all of that in my own time. Even though my wind chime may not look as good as I want it to at the current moment, I am still happy with the progress that I have made, as the wind chime is now functionally complete!