Have you ever seen those expensive mobiles on etsy.com and wanted one for yourself, but did not want to spend $70+ on one? Well, I sure did. When I found out we were having a girl I immediately started looking at Pinterest.com for nursery ideas. Originally I wanted to have a black and peach room, but when the walls got painted grey I decided to leave them and come up with a new plan. I kind of started to settle on some kind of floral theme, but I didn’t want to over do it either. I was drawn to watercolor flower pictures and started to wonder how I could incorporate them into her room. The inspiration being that expensive mobile I had seen on Pinterest.
Everyone I know considers me the “crafty” one of the bunch. So I decided to empower myself to create my own mobile. First I had to decide on the colors I wanted. I knew I wanted it to match the name plate we had made that had red, cream, and blue flowers in it. So off to the store I went. I purchased all my supplies at Hobby Lobby, but I am not sure every state has one of those, so the links will be through Wal-Mart.
To start here is what you will need:
[$7] 1 embroidery hoop (any size will work, so you decide what size you want) it will look like this one https://www.walmart.com/ip/SODIAL-SODIAL-R-4x-Embroidery-hoop-bamboo-Circle-Embroidery-cross-stitch-17-20-23-26cm/108250759
[$2] 1 green embroidery floss (not regular thread, it will break) (you could try to use yarn, but it might be more difficult to get it through the flower with the sewing needle) https://www.walmart.com/ip/Iris-36-Pack-Embroidery-Floss-Pack-8m-Variegated-Colors-Multi-Colored/24941456
[$2-3] 4 different colors of felt sheets (or whatever colors you want to use. I bought one sheet per type of flower I wanted to make.
[$1-2] 2-3 sheets of green felt (I used two different tones of green)
[$1] 1 black felt sheet (for the flower centers)
[$2] 1 sewing needle
[$2] 1 roll of green (or whatever color you want) ribbon
[$5] a hot glue gun and hot glue gun sticks
I also recommend using parchment paper so that the glue doesn’t stick to everything if you tend to be a little bit of a messy gluer like I am.
Directions
Now, I searched on Pinterest for felt flower patterns and went off of those. Once I got the idea on what I was doing I sort of just made up my own. Here is one of the tutorials that I used
http://www.repiny.com/pin-2389.html
Essentially you can do all your flowers this way, but if you cut a bumpy pattern along the edge after creating the whirl, you will get different kinds of flowers.
Then I cut out different sizes of leaves on the different tones of green felt that I had.
Once I had all the flowers I wanted done and dried I threaded the embroidery floss on the sewing needle and pushed it through the flower, took the needle off, tied a knot so that the flower would not fall off of the floss, and then measured out how long I wanted that particularly floss to be from the hoop. Cut the floss then tie it to the hoop where ever you want it placed. I did this until all the flowers were on. Then I took the leave and pinched the end together around the floss where I wanted it, put a little bit of hot glue, then let it dry. I repeated this until all the leaves I wanted were on.
After all the flowers and leaves were on and dried I then took the green ribbon and cut four equal pieces, tied each one to the hoop, and then joined them together at the top so create the part that makes it hang. Now you could also choose to wrap the hoop in the ribbon if you want. I did not because we had some other pieces of natural wood in her room so we felt that it looked better with the wood showing.
Here is what mine looks like. My daughter loves looking up at it when we are in her room. I only spent about $15 on mine as I already had some of the materials at home. Let me know in the comments below if you tried it out and if you enjoyed it as much as I did.
-Jenn
Reclaiming My Sanity 