Repurposed Kitchen Junk Owl Wind Chime

7 Materials
$10
4 Hours
Medium

One of my favorite things to do is make stuff out of other stuff, and because I'm a girl who pretty much sees a wind chime in almost everything this project quickly morphed into a wind chime.

Here are my supplies. You can find the list at the bottom of this post.

To start I measured, marked and drilled 10 evenly spaced holes around the bottom of the grater. Then I added my split rings through the holes.

For the owl wings I'm using two vintage Christmas tree cookie cutters. I drilled a hole the size of the bolt I'm using through the cookie cutter and the grater.

Then I fed through the bolt and attached the nut on the inside of the grater.


I tightened it up with a screw driver just enough so the wing doesn't move, but not too much so the cookie cutter doesn't get squished.

Next I added the vintage beaded necklace parts on the split rings and added split rings to their ends, but anything could be used... fishing line, jute twine, jewelry wire. Whatever you have really.

I attached the oil lamp part eyes, and the tea strainer nose, with Marine Goop adhesive.


After the goop dried I drilled holes through the eyes and added the nuts and bolts. Marine Goop is a very good glue but the eyes are kinda big and bulky so I just wanted to give them a little extra strength.


You can just see the handle in this pic and you'll notice that I bent it to look like owl ears. I used a hammer to gently do this.

I had planned on hanging ten veggie peelers, but I was only able to drill a hole into eight.

So I added two stainless steel measuring spoons. You could use all measuring spoons too, and the great thing about that is they already come with holes in the handles.


That's the fun thing about repurposing projects... you can just improvise and use whatever you have on hand. I love looking through my stashes to see what I can use.

I really wanted the owl to have cute little feet clutching a branch... so I cut some claws out of a very thin vintage jello mold, and I used a pick from a nutcracker set as the branch.

The feet are glued on the inside of the grater, and the pick is glued on the front.

And here's my finished junk owl wind chime hanging by the cedars next to my green house/junk storage house.

I hung four veggie peelers across the front and four across the back, and one measuring spoon on each side. I'm a symmetrical-loving kind of girl so I liked the way this looked.

There are so many possibilities and combos to make every junk owl wind chime one of a kind.


To see more tips and pics for making this owl wind chime, and to see a few more versions that I created, click here to check out this project post on my blog.


You can find more wind chime projects here.

Resources for this project:
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3 of 4 questions
  • Barb Barb on Jul 31, 2018

    where are the cookie cutters

  • Roseann8628 Roseann8628 on Jul 30, 2019

    Love this! Whimsical and fun, would make anyone smile. Thanks for sharing. :)

  • Krafty Kathy Krafty Kathy on Aug 11, 2023

    Now will it scary off the Squirrels and Bluejays that eat my peaches and pecans?? Might be too cute to be scary.

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