I am not too crafty. I try to be, but usually my projects end up looking like a five year old did them. I'm not really sure why I decided to then embark on a crafting mission for the baby's room, but that's what I did.
First, I decided to make a
no sew crib skirt and some
no sew curtains from
Young House Love, but all I've actually done is purchase material and supplies. More to come on that.
I then decided to make a hanging mobile for the room since most store bought ones I find either very expensive or very cheesy. After google image searching "diy baby mobile" and looking through 15 pages of results, I decided to go with
this one. It even was already the colour I wanted.
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| This is the goal! |
So I went to a craft store, bought some yellow card stock, clear thread (or fishing wire), a wooden needle point ring thing and some yellow ribbon. Unlike the example on the website, where she used a wooden circle for the top and then painted it, I decided to use a ring and then wrap it with ribbon. Here is the project, from start to pretty much finish.
1. First, I traced the circles using a bunnykins egg cup and a pencil.
2. Next, I cut them out using extremely heavy cutco scissors. My fingers had indentations in them for a while.
3. I cut a long piece of clear thread and tied a double knot on the bottom.
4. Then I poked a hole in the centre of a cut circle with a safety pin. (I didn't take a picture, but I actually erased all the rogue pencil lines from the circles after I cut them. I have discovered that I am a terrible cutter.)
5. I then thread the circle onto the thread.
6. Then I tied another double knot a little bit higher than the first circle. I got a little creative here and decided that every other string of circles would be longer, so for half of them, I tied the knots further apart, and for the other half I tied them closer together.
7. I then poked another circle and thread it on to the thread.
8. Each thread got nine circles.
9. As I finished each string of circles, I tied it around the wooden ring. (I just wrapped it around and tied two knots. It was kind of tough to do it on my own, but much easier when Matt held the ring up for me as I tied.)
10. Yay I'm done with the circle strings!
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| Matt wanted to be on the blog. |
11. I gathered all the tops of the strings and tied them in a knot. It was very difficult to get it level.
12. I put a glob of Aleen's Tacky Glue (it's even the same stuff as they use on YHL! It's as if we're best friends already!) on the inside of the ring and held my yellow ribbon there for a minute or so and then got to wrapping. Here is where I realized a small mistake. I DEFINITELY should have wrapped the ring with the ribbon before I tied nine strings around it. Whenever I got to a string, I had to really maneuver around it and try to not mess up the wrapping or hanging integrity. It was annoying. Along the way I put a dab of glue here and there for good measure.
13. Ta da! I'm done! (It ended up being much more level than that, which is explained in the notes.)
So there's the mobile! Not too far from the goal really! She has a much cleaner background so you can see it a lot better, but I did this in my messy living room so background clutter is what you get!
A few notes:
- I don't know exactly how I will hang it from the ceiling. I will probably string another piece of clear thread under the knot of gathered threads so that I can choose the level I would like instead of just having to go with what I have to work with. I think I have a little hook thing that I can screw into the ceiling.
- I actually ran out of ribbon about two centimetres too early. Luckily, I had more ribbon. Still, It was very annoying to need just a tiny piece to finish off the ring.
- While wrapping, I inadvertently moved all the strings around so after I was all done, I had to untie the big knot and re-level everything and then re-tie it. I wasn't too thrilled with that. Definitely wrap the ring first if you try this.
- I did this over two nights of trashy reality TV. First, Big Brother, and second, Bachelor Pad. Bachelor Pad? Really? I was ashamed but couldn't stop watching. Vienna and Jake are both idiots.
- I can't believe that this actually worked. Seriously.
So now, attach to ceiling, and also decide where exactly to put it. I'm leaning towards over the change table instead of over the crib. My sister pointed out that *if* it falls, it could be a major hazard over the crib. I agree.
Now hopefully the crib skirt goes as well. Or better really. The curtains? I'm nervous.
