Remember when I made my mussel shell garland and just wasn’t as excited about it as I thought I would be? I was thinking about how I could make something that would show the shells off like I wanted, and realized they should hang vertically… in a wind chime. Boom. My next craft was already forming in my head about 5 minutes after I finished the first.
Mussel Shell Wind Chime
What you’ll need:
- 8″metal craft ring
- Twine
- Hot glue gun
- Scissors
- Mussel shells
- Drill
- 3/64″ Drill bit
- Scrap wood
- High Gloss Acrylic spray
- Thin twine
- Beads
This project started by me making my first mussel shell garland with the beads and a few inches of space in between each grouping of shells in my garland. Then I pulled out my metal craft hoop and started wrapping twine around it, using hot glue to attach it to the hoop. Put a little bit of hot glue on the hoop and then wrap until you need to add more glue. I ended up wrapping it in 2 layers to make sure you could’t see the metal at all.
Since my garland was already made, it was pretty quick to finish the rest of this project! I cut the garland into pieces, right by the bead so there was a little twine and then the bead & mussel shell grouping on each string. I ended up with 7 pieces of twine / mussel shells and tied each of them around the ring, about equi-distant.
The last step was to tie 3 more pieces of twine, and bring them up to create a loop and tie a knot for hanging the wind chime. ThenI hung it off our porch before giving it to our friends as a gift – the mussel shells actually came from them back in 2016 as extras from where they used them as place cards at their wedding!
Luckily I have a few more mussel shells that already have holes drilled in them that can become a wind chime for us and our porch. Although the sail boats were cute, this might be my favorite mussel shell craft to date!
