Make your own kite {DIY tutorial inside}

kite diy
Spotting the big grey clouds?
This is how the sky looked most of the time during the May holidays of KleinR.

One morning we got the “kite idea” – well KleinR was talking about a kite we owned but was ruined after the kids run around the house with it like some little crazy chickens, so, me cool mummy, said: let’s make one.

We went out to buy a few things (luckily we have a hardware and a nice hand made store close by) and in the end we had these tools on the table:
kite dyi
Scissors
Twine
Tape
a strip of wood, I would say ours was 1cm wide and maybe 0,5cm thick and 2m long
normal glue
wood glue
saw (I found a tiny one whilst shopping at the hard ware store, you will see in the next step why)
measuring tape
a drill
kite paper
kite twine

Lets start:
We start to cut the wooden strip to build the frame. It is up to you how big you want the kite to be, ours turned out really big. We had one long strip of 100cm and a shorter one of 80cm.

Take your tiny saw and saw on all four ends a tiny ‘nut’. You will see perfectly what I mean on the picture below. The ‘nut’ is to hold the twine to form the frame of the kite.
kite diy

Take the long strip and measure 15cm from each end and drill a hole. These you will need for the kite twine later.
Then drill another hole at just 1,5cm from one end for the tail.
Measure 30cm from the end of the long strip where you did NOT make the hole for the tail. Here you will glue the shorter strip with the help of the wood glue in a right angle.
To stabilize you will use the normal twine and wrap it around the 2 glued strips.

When you are done with all that, take the normal twine and run it around the four corners, using the ‘nuts’ on each end to keep it in place. You can ‘secure’ each end with some tape to make sure the twine cannot pop out.
Set it tight, make a knot and voila, the kite has a shape!

I am sure the picture explains it much better than me:
kite dyi

Now you lay out your kite paper, place the frame on top and as you can see I used some clementines (they were close by) to keep the paper flat and easy to cut around the frame…
Fold the ends and glue them.
kite dyi
Basically your kite is done and you could just insert the kite twine in the holes and go but a kite is not a kite without a face and decoration. And this is probably the most fun part for the kids anyway: make the kite YOUR kite.

So out the box of markers, glitter,stickers, crepe paper and and and…
kite dyi
kite dyi
kite dyi

PS: I hope I could explain it in a way you could follow and feel ready to make your own kite…

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