When putting together E and V’s Easter baskets I really wanted to include hand kites. For our little runners who enjoy dragging things behind them, I thought this would be something they would greatly enjoy–especially outdoors on a windy day. After blowing the month’s budget and seeing some of the prices, I decided I would just make our own rainbow and spring-themed hand kites.
We have a lot of wooden rings as there are so many uses for them (post about that coming soon:). I had spools of ribbon leftover from a mobile I made them as infants (insert my babies aren’t babies any more tears) and had received some spring-themed ribbon from my mum.
I decided to make two for each of them: one with shorter ribbons (12″) as they enjoy wearing wooden rings as bracelets and the other, rainbow, more traditional length ribbon (22″).
I highly recommend checking out and supporting Montessori in Color’ and their Flexin’ My Complexion hand kites. Why support and not recreate? One, don’t steal ideas! It’s okay to recreate rainbow hand kites because they are generic. It’s like shirts, they are generic–but copying a shirt from Burberry sin’t cool. Two, support Black businessesđź–¤
Now, back to making our hand kites.
All you need:
- After cutting the length (four feet for the more traditional ones), I burned the ends with a lighter to prevent them from unraveling, just singeing it enough without it turning black. (That melting is why only certain fabrics, like cotton, are recommended for children’s sleepwear.)
2. A simply loop tie and knot, repeated for each ribbon strand, and that’s it. I prefer the look of loop tie and knot, but you can always just knot the ribbons. I’ll add a photo that shows both variations.
This was my first attempt at making a hand kit and I was surprised at how simple it was and how lovely they turned out.
Have you made a hand kite before? If not, do you think you’ll try one now seeing how simple they are?
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