How to Make a Bottle Wind Spinner

Make wind spinners from plastic bottles.

Wind spinners add movement and visual interest to your landscape or garden. You can certainly purchase wind spinners, but making them at home is a more inexpensive and earth-friendly option. Lightweight plastic bottles make a perfect base for your wind spinners because they move in the wind easily but are also weatherproof. Plus, you can decorate them with lots of different materials for variation in your landscape.

Things You'll Need

• 2-liter bottle
• Colorful painter's tape
• Ruler
• Grease pencil
• Utility knife
• Paint
• Awl
• Craft wire

Instructions

1. Clean and rinse your bottle thoroughly. Scrub it to remove all of the label and adhesive. Let it air dry.

2. Make stripes around the center of your bottle with painter's tape. Wrap the tape around the bottle, matching the edges of one piece of tape exactly with the piece of tape above it. Use ½-inch wide tape for best results.

3. Make grease pencil dots at even intervals right above your first stripe. Use your ruler to make corresponding dots right below your last stripe. Intervals of ½ inch to ¾ inch should work well for spacing.

4. Poke your utility knife into the plastic on one of your dots and drag it down to a corresponding dot. Continue around your bottle, creating vertical strips in your bottle as you go. Pinch the center of each strip to make them stick out to catch the wind.

5. Poke two holes in the cap with your awl. Snip a piece of craft wire about a foot long and slip one end down through one of the holes. Bend the wire and slip the same end back up through the cap's second hole. Twist the sides of the wires together, put the cap on the bottle and hang it from a tree.

References

• Crafts for All Seasons: Pop Bottle Wind Spinners
• Blue Bonnet Village: Wind Spinner or Whirligig