Bird Mobile

Only 8 more weeks to go. I am growing (literally) with excitement. Maximus has been active, kicking and punching/kickboxing. Since there's not much time left before he arrives, I've been trying to finish up some projects. Recently I made a bird mobile, to go over his crib.

I have to tell you that I had SO much fun doing this project, but I can't take credit for the idea. It came from Martha Stewart. I'm including the link to the "how to" video here.

For the branches, instead of regular wire on a roll like Martha used, I found 6 pieces of wire wrapped with brown paper measuring about 18" each. Then I used brown floral tape and wrapped each wire individually. After that, I took all six wires and wrapped about a 6-8" section in the middle to secure them all together. I found both of these items in the floral section at Jo-Ann Fabrics. I loved how easy it was to manipulate these wires in the direction that I wanted.

As far as the little birdies go. The link to the template is here. Using craft paper, I printed the template directly onto the paper or traced it out. There are 3 parts to the bird. Since most of the paper only had a print on one side, I glued two pieces together. I used a razor blade or box cutter to make a slit in the body, for the wings. The tail was having trouble staying on, so I used a bit of glue around the slit. That did the trick. And instead of buying a tiny hole punch, I simply took a heavy duty sewing needle to poke a hole in the body of the bird, in order to hang it by string. The gold looking string that I used was in the same section as embroidery thread. It's a fancier thread though. I cut long pieces separating the thread to just one strand. And in order to make sure the birds didn't come untied, I hot glued the hole and knot as well as wrapped the thread around the branches several times and then knotted it twice.

The flowers were made using a flower craft punch by Martha Stewart, purchased at Michael's. To make the leaves, I just punched out a flower and cut a petal or two off and shaped it to look like a leaf. Then I hot glued this to the back of the flower.

Each flower was then threaded with some of that gold, fancy-ish embroidery thread. I separated the thread in half and cut pieces about 2-3 inches long. Then, ran the thread through some glue, twisting it to make little stems. Once dried, I tied two knots on one end, hole punched the flower in the middle (with my needle) and threaded the flower. The knotted part shows on the top, making it look more like a flower.

I also hot glued the underside of the flower to secure the thread from moving. Then, I just kind of pulled the petals together in order to make the flower look like a flower and not a flat piece of paper. After that, I was ready to wrap the thread around the wires (branches), using more floral tape to secure and hide the stems.

A ribbon was added to the middle of the branch and Rob hung it by a hook in the ceiling. I did some finishing touches of bending the branches and straightening out the birds.

And there you have it. I figured if we ever have a little girl, I could use the same mobile...maybe change out the birds and flowers, to make it a little more girlie girl. Although, I think this one would work for either gender.

Happy day!

hi-d