Urban Nest

I’ve seen lots of great DIY mobiles in blog land recently, and I decided to try my making one of my own for Nathan’s room.  I was inspired by some cute, paper Christmas ornaments I made this year, and they worked perfectly for this project.  I hung the mobile in Nate’s room yesterday, and I love the added pops of color!

I was pleasantly surprised how quickly this project came together (I was a little worried that it would take hours of cutting, folding, and gluing, but it really wasn’t bad)!  Here’s what I did:

1. Gather your supplies:  paper (I used scrap-booking paper), ruler, rotary cutter and mat, scissors, spray adhesive, craft glue, clear thread, needle, pencil, an embroidery hoop (I had a few sizes on hand to choose from), and a small plastic ring (I used one left over from some roman shades I made).
2. Cut your paper into 3 inch strips.
3. Cut the strips in half.
4. Fold each strip in half along the long side.
5. Using the spray adhesive (in a well ventilated area), glue 6 of the folded strips together along the folded edges.
6. Do not glue the first and last of the 6 folded strips together.
7. Fold the stack of strips flat and draw half of the shape you’d like the finished piece to be (I did circles, squares, triangles and diamonds).
8. Using scissors, cut along the line.  (I was able to get 2 shapes out of each of my 6 inch folded stacks.)
9. Unfold and glue the last 2 sides together.
10. Repeat steps 2-9 with the remaining paper (I had 9 sheets that ranged in size from 8 1/2 x 11 to 12 x 12).
11. Using a needle and clear thread, poke a hole in each piece and hang from a loop of thread.
12. Hang the embroidery hoop from the small plastic ring using the clear thread.  I hung mine from my dining room chandelier using a clothes pin to make it easier to work with.
13. Hang the shapes from the hoop at varying lengths.
14. Hang the finished mobile from the ceiling.  Mine is not directly over the crib – I didn’t want to risk hanging anything that could possibly fall into the crib!

Just a few more projects left before the nursery is finally complete.  Maybe it will be done before Nathan is 6 months…  Better late than never, right?!

Tags: how to, instructions, mobile, nursery

This entry was posted on Friday, May 21st, 2010 at 10:20 am and is filed under Build the Nest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.