Make a Green Kite with Recycled Materials

Warm spring days are the perfect time to enjoy being outside. What better outdoor activity is there than to go green and make a kite from recycled materials? This tutorial will make a diamond shape kite that will measure roughly 14" x 10". No two will be exactly the same size.

Making the kite was just as fun flying it. We make the kite from recycled materials that we had lying around the house. Old newspapers, dowels or sticks, old pieces of yarn and torn trash bags were all fair game.

As a child, one of my favorite activities was hit the backyard with my dad and kite in tow. It didn't matter if we were there for two minutes or hours. I loved feeling the sun on my back and the breeze in the air. I never was any good at flying a kite but fun was had just the same.

You and your family can have that same kind of bonding experience. Here are the supplies that I used in the photo tutorial to make the kite from recycled materials. Once the supplies were gathered it didn't take long before I was reliving my childhood days.

The main elements of the kite are the support pieces, string frame, cover and tail. Of course, you will also need a flying line of string or yarn.

Supplies:
Scissors
Plastic grocery stacks
2 Wire hangars with cardboard tubes
String
Black permanent marker
Tape
Cardboard
2 Twist ties from old bread sacks

Cover your surface
When you make a kite from recycled materials or another craft project you must protect your work surface. I like to use cardboard or newspaper.

Support pieces
Next, remove the tubes from the wire hangers. Use the wire in another project later. To make a kite from recycled materials, trim one tube to so that one is shorter than the other. Cut a slit across the ends of both tubes and put together to form a cross. Secure with twist ties.

Make the frame
Recycle string to create the frame for the kite. It should be sturdy and long enough to go all the way around the outside edge of the support pieces. Secure the string by pushing it into the notches on the ends of the tubes. The entire frame should now be a diamond shape.

Cut out the cover for your kite made from recycled materials
Cut a plastic grocery sack lengthwise and spread flat. Lay the kite face down and trace the diameter about 1 inch away from the string. When trimmed, the cover should be larger than the frame by about 1 inch all the way around.

Stretch the cover
Put the kite frame facedown onto the wrong side of the plastic piece that you just cut. Fold the plastic edges over the string and secure with tape. Do this 4 times, once per side. Leave the bottom tube on the kite made from recycled materials with enough space to tie the tail. The cover should be taught but not extremely tight.

Reinforce
Reinforce the center of the kite made from recycled materials by adding a 3 inch long piece of wide tape onto the cover. Put the tape above the part where the tubes meet in the center of the cross.

Tie the flight loop
Cut two small holes in the reinforced area. One should be to the top left of center just above the horizontal tube. The second hole goes in the bottom right of center just under the horizontal tube.

Thread the string into the first hole; pull it across the back of the tube and out the front of the kite. The string on the kite made from recycled materials should form a diagonal line across the back of the support pieces. Pull the pieces about 4 inches from the front of the kite and tie together. Clip the ends to about 1 inch long.

Flight line
Use several knots to tie the flight line onto the loop.

Make a tail
Some pieces of plastic should be left from making the cover of the kite. Recycle the longer pieces of plastic by rolling it lengthwise. Tie it to the bottom of the vertical tube to form the tail. Tie short pieces of rolled plastic onto the tail. Discard any remaining pieces.

Refer to the photo tutorial here for a photo tutorial.

Put on your sunscreen and have fun with the kite made from recycled materials. It's the perfect way to go green this spring.