These painted wind chimes look very pretty hung outside your house and make a lovely clunking noise when they get blown by the wind.

What you will need:

Chunky sticks

Acrylic paints

Paint brush

Screw eyes

Sandpaper

Twine

Scissors

Home made wind chimes from painted rainbow sticks

What you need to do:

1. Go for a walk and collect some chunky sticks, we decided to have five hanging on our chime (and one for them to hang from), but you might want to have more. Ideally, they will all be different thicknesses and slightly varying lengths, as this will make your chimes more tuneful!

2. Next you need to peel any loose bark off the sticks and smooth them with your sandpaper, we actually couldn’t find our sandpaper and we managed without it, so it’s not absolutely necessary, but doing a bit of sanding is quite a nice activity for little ones. .

3. Then, choose one of the sticks for the others to hang from, and sort your hanging sticks into the order you want to hang them.

4. Take your metal screw eyes and screw them into the centre of each of the sticks that will be hanging.

5. Next, paint your sticks and leave them to dry.

6. You can then brush on a coat of varnish if you have some, clear nail varnish would work fine. This isn’t essential but will protect the colour for longer.

7. While your sticks are drying, take the longest stick, which you’ll be using to hang your wind chimes to, and cut around 50cm (20 inches) of twine. Tie the twine to both ends of the stick.

8. Next, cut lengths of around 20cm (8 inches) off your twine and thread one through the metal eyes of each of the sticks, tying them to your base hanging stick.

9. Finally, hang your wind chimes somewhere outdoors for everyone to see and listen to!