Saturday, February 26, 2011

Easy Colorful Mobile

Well so much for 20 posts this month.
Unless I put up 12 posts in the next couple days :)


Luke needed (and still needs) art and decor for his new bedroom.

Enter fun-ceiling-hangy-art.

Supplies:
1 embroidery hoop (inside loop), any size you want
string, yarn, floss, or ribbon (ribbon is easiest
scrapbook paper
beads
shape punches, cricut/silhouette/whatever or a good pair of scissors and lots of patience (yeah, right!)

I wasn't really thinking "tutorial" when I made this
but it's really easy. You could probably figure it out without reading my mumbo jumbo!

STEPS:
1.Paint your embroidery hoop loop (just the inside loop is needed), then while it's drying you can cut out your circles.
2. Cut your ribbons all the same length, a few inches longer than you want your mobile to hang. I used 4 ribbons around the outside, and one hanging down the middle from a criss-cross of ribbon. I hot glued them as I wrapped them around the embroidery hoop. Make sure these are very secure! {see picure below}
3. Next, secure one end of the string for your beads, thread on your beads (making sure you have an equal number for both sides (like 18 & 18 =36 total on one string or more if you want it much longer). And then secure the other end. Then do it again for your second string going perpendicular. So really you have just 2 strings of beads going from on side to the other creating 4 shorter strings when you hang it up. Make sure these strings are REALLY secure because the last thing you want to do is restring all the beads because it broke and they all fell off!!! {i know because it happened to me!}
3. Cut out all your circles from your scrapbook paper.
I used a lot of different patterns, and my circles were mostly 1.5 inches. On this one that I made first, I had some circles that were bigger and I threw in ovals and diamonds, but it's easier if you just use all the same shape and size.
Also, you need TWO of each pattern per circle going on your mobile. You will glue a front and a back to a ribbon. For example, if each ribbon hanging from the mobile has 7 circles, you will really need 14. Finally, I have 5 ribbons for hanging circles and each one has about 7 circles hanging from it, so I need 35 circles (times 2 = 70 circles cut out!) I used lots of different patterned papers. i hope all that annoying math stuff makes sense. I didn't actually count when I did this, I just had like 15 sheets of patterns and cut out 8 circles of each...which was more than i needed, but then I could just put them on as I wanted to without being to matchy-matchy.

4. Take 2 circles of the same pattern (or different if you prefer) and glue them front & back with the ribbon in between. That's so when they twirl around you don't see the ribbon on the other side of the circle. Repeat until you've glued on ALL your circles!! Then you are done!

Voila. Done.

Here's another version that I made with a friend for her nursery:
More beads, less circles, using skinny ribbon instead of string to glue the circles onto
{sorry for the bad lighting in the picture}

3 comments:

  1. Really looks great. There are so many projects one can do with those loops.

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  2. I love both of them. They look amazzzzing. Really, you are quite the crafty lady. I can't wait to see what else you create.

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  3. So cute! It was so fun to see you the other day... Good luck with the Bijou! Can't wait to see if you got in :)

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