Sweet Little Bird Mobile

I finished Little Girl's mobile! Woot woot! I really love how it turned out and am loving how all the little details in her nursery are coming together!

I've seen a lot of paper mobiles around Pinterest that are just beautiful. I combined a few of the mobiles I had seen to create my own version. Of course, mine is more simple and less fussy than most of the mobiles I have seen, but that's just the way I roll. I love simple.

I started out with four sheets of cardstock paper in the colors of Little Girl's nursery. I drew a bird on a piece of scrap paper and cut it out to use as a stencil. Then, I just traced and cut out several birds in each color. I did a dozen of each color, but ended up only using about half of them. For the wings, I made a heart shaped stencil with scrap paper, then traced and cut out 2 dozen wings per color. Again, I only used about half of them, though. If you have a heart shaped paper cutter, it would save a ton of time! I folded my cardstock in half lengthwise and cut half of the heart along the crease so the wings came out pre-folded and I only had to cut half as much. Overall, it was 2-3 hours total of scissor work. Thankfully, it was pretty mindless and something I could do while watching tv.

To hang the birds, I laid out a long piece of transparent thread and placed it down the middle of each bird. I put a bead of hot glue on top of the thread and placed a wing on top. The wing allowed me to hide the glue nicely. I alternated the direction and color of the birds going down the thread. After the thread was glued on, I flipped my birds over and glued a wing on the back of each bird (with no thread going through). I did one thread with five birds, three threads with 4 birds, and three threads with 3 birds.

I purchased a thin, wooden dowel and a wooden quilting hoop from A.C. Moore to hang the birds on. I pulled out the solid hoop (I tossed the hoop with the screw), then painted the solid hoop and dowel light green. I cut the dowel to make two rods for the center of the hoop. I made them into an X and hot glued them to the inside of the quilting hoop.

After the paint was dry, I tied my strings of birds onto the hoop. Originally, I had planned to put strings of birds around hoop, on each dowel rod, and in the center. However, as I started hanging my birds, I realized that would be too many birds for the medium sized hoop I purchased. I ended up using the string of five birds down the middle, then alternated the strings with 3 and 4 birds around the hoop. Tying the transparent thread onto the hoop was surprisingly difficult because I was trying to hold the mobile upright so the strings didn't get tangled and tie knots at the same time. My hubby rescued me and held the mobile up while I tied. I ended up putting a bead of hot glue on the inside of the hoop and sticking my thread to it to hold it in place, then tying the thread on. That kept the thread from sliding all around and generally causing chaos. ;)

To hang the finished product, I tied four strings around the hoop and then gathered them at the top and tied them together. Mine is actually temporarily held up by the transparent thread and a thumb tack. Classy, I know. But, later this week, I am going to replace the threads I used for hanging the mobile with some stronger fishing wire and attach the fishing wire to a hook hanging from the ceiling. Just making sure it doesn't come falling down! :)

This entire project only cost me about $7! Definitely an economical project with a big impact! You could easily change the colors and animals/shapes to make a mobile to match any nursery!

A non-nursery related post is coming up next. Can you believe it's almost Thanksgiving?!

Linking up to Thrifty Decor Chick, Work it Wednesday, Thrifty Thursday, and The Humble Brag link parties!