Homemade Hand Kites

I made these hand kites over the weekend. What do you think?

I found the solid wood circles at the thrift store- a brand new 7-pk for .65 cents! I had no idea what I would use them for but I knew I had to have them. 

The number seven certainly was an inspiration, since I LOVE rainbow colors, it was an easy leap to imagine these as hand kites in all the rainbow colors. Fate? I think so. The next day I picked up some ribbon and within an hour I had a rainbow of pretty streamers for the kids. I decided to do 7 different colors rather than a full rainbow for each to help with color recognition. I could just hear them now- "I want the BLUE one, Ms. Wendy!"

So far the daycare kids, as well as Alex, love them. We've been using them for dancing and music, being birds and butterflies and anything else our imaginations can come up with. 

If you make these yourself, you do need to heat seal the ends of the ribbons. After having them for a few days the cats thought they were obviously meant for them and they were beginning to fray already. I used a candle flame and held the tip of each ribbon just barely away from it and it gently melted the end so it was sealed nicely and shouldn't fray again. 

I looked up the rings online and they sell for about $8 just for the rings, and the hand kites sell for $60 for a set of 10 on Etsy, or $7 for ONE. I really got a great deal finding these and doing them myself, and I can tell you they are EASY as pie to make. 

The biggest cost was the ribbon. If you sew a lot you probably already have an assortment of ribbon, and any kind of ribbon will do. I wanted something specific for colors, so even though I have ribbon I've been collecting from thrift stores and sales for months, I decided this time I needed to buy it new from the store. If I was just doing this for Alex, I might use what I had on hand and not care about the colors as much. The ribbon I got was from JoAnne's fabric store. It cost $2 for an 18 foot roll per color, so I paid a total of about $16 to make all 7 hand kites. Compared to the retail of about $60, I saved oodles and I like that it was made by me. 

Love them!