beach combing

we have gotten so lucky for our short time we get to live in hawaii, we get to live on historic and iconic pearl harbor. admittedly we are not beach people. we love the water and we hated the sand. over our recent time living in florida and now our time in hawaii we are learning tips and trick to make the sand part more manageable. but living on the harbor we get the water without the sand. we take daily walks to look for sea turtles, pick up some trash here and there and my newest obsession is sea shells! but before i was turned on to shelling i started picking up drift wood.

one popular front porch decoration here are drift wood “wind chimes.” while they don’t make a beautiful sound of traditional wind chimes, they sure to add a little bit of beach happy to the home.

so here is my best attempt at a pictorial diy for how i made my driftwood wind chime

first thing was gathering the materials. what you will need for this are

• driftwood pieces – i had around 50 ranging in length from 2″-10′
• fishing line – i would recommend anything over 10 lb capacity
• drill
• hardware for hanging – i got lucky there was a hook on our porch already
• time!

i tried to get a variety of lengths of driftwood and used the ones that had a little more “personality” as the top and bottom pieces.

for a few weeks i let them sit outside and dry out thoroughly and i placed them in a mesh bag to try to shake off as much sand as possible.

then i lined them up in what i thought looked like a random yet pleasing order on my dining table (out of reach from my toddler as much as i could)

to add interest you could place wooden, to metal beads in between the branches, however it’s COVID-19 times and i opted not to order any, plus i don’t work, so i keep myself on a budget.

now comes the fun (exhausting) part! power tools! i was actually sore later that night from holding the drill… one at a time, CAREFULLY drill holes in the center of each branch.

next i laid out the fishing line. starting at the top, i estimated how much i would need, i was generous considering the line stretches a little under the weight, but i was only able to find 6 lb capacity line so i knew i wanted to double string mine.

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once threaded from top to bottom, I looped the line around the last piece of wood and knotted it so it wasn’t wiggling and creating a sawing effect that might weaken my line.

then i re-ran the line back up the pieces.

now the test! picking it up. it didn’t snap! whew… so i tied a simple knot, which i looked up for the purpose of this post, called a surgeons loop knot.

I had a carabiner I used so it would be easy to place on the almost out of reach hook on my porch.

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I can’t tell you how happy i was with the outcome!

the beauty of this is that you don’t have to be limited to driftwood! you could make a simple wind chime line of anything you like! shells, pinecones, toys, get creative! i’d love to see what you create!

lastly clean up. the work surface was my dining table after all… no matter how much I tried to clean them up there was still sand that escaped and of course some saw dust from the drill

i hope you’ll give this a try, and i hope i explained myself well. have patience, i’m new at this!