So two of my best friends are having babies- both due in October and both boys! It's been a crazy time recently for me and babies. I swear it seems like EVERYONE and their mom are pregnant (okay maybe not their mom's, but you get the picture). A couple weeks ago I went to three baby showers within 8 days. Baby's R Us has about half of my bank account now! Of course I am having such a great time looking at all the baby stuff and getting things for these new little men, I (sort of) don't mind spending all my money on them.
Since I've been addicted to Pintrest recently, I have been pinning crafty baby stuff like crazy and can't wait to make all sorts of cute stuff for these upcoming babies in my life. I did get to make my first gift for little Logan Patrick Schauer (and of course his mommy!) a few weeks ago. Mommy (aka my bff..&e&e&e&e&e) and Daddy have decided to go with a airplane (and helicopter) theme for little Logan's room, so of course when I saw this picture:
found on Pintrest but originally from here
And tons of pictures like this:
Also found on Pintrest but originally from here
And of course this blog post/tutorial from the amazing couple over at Young House Love on how they made the cool mobile for their little girl's nursery, seen here:
I knew I had to make something for that baby! Since the baby shower was coming up, I checked on the registry for the bedding and mentally noted colors. I briefly viewed the tutorial for the clothespin airplane, figured I could wing the ribbon mobile part, and headed to Michaels.
I wandered around the store looking for anything, and everything, that would make this work. I ended up with: medium sized clothes pins, smaller and larger popsicle sticks, tan, blue, and green paint, clear string, three spools of skinny ribbon, and a wire wreath form. And since I didn't have any of the crafting essentials, I had to purchase those too: foamy paint brushes, and glue gun, and glue sticks (and a note to self, and anyone as ditsy as I am, be sure glue sticks are the right size for the glue gun- cutting sticks in quarters to fit into your glue gun makes a HUGE MELTY MESS).
I started with this pile of stuff :
What's not in this picture is the wreath form that I bought the hang everything from (don't worry it's coming!). I went with the wreath form as opposed to an embroidery hoop (which is what most of the ribbon mobiles I've seen are made on) because I wanted to be able to hang the airplanes in different spots on the mobile, and not just around the outside. The one I bought had three rows of wire (heavy, thick, sturdy wire) at varying heights, so the planes could be hung on the outside and more towards the middle. I'm sure there's other things you could use that would let you hang more towards the middle. Originally I was hoping to find something similar to the splatter screens that people use for cooking, or to be able to make something like that with a thick wire hoop and thin bendy wire. but the wreath form was sitting right at the end of the aisle, would do the job, and would require less work from me.
Step one was the paint the pieces. I decided that I wanted the airplanes bodies and wings to be different colors, like in the photo above, but wanted the larger and smaller wings to be the same color. You can see I used a box from recycling to paint both sides of the clothes pins at once, and would just flip the popsicle sticks once one side was dry (luckily the paint dried pretty fast). I didn't know how many airplanes I would need, but I figured the more, the better, and then I'd have more color options when hanging them. I painted about 12-16 clothespins, then chose how many popsicle sticks of each color to paint based on how many of each color clothespins I had, so I wouldn't end up with any planes that were all one color (don't ask me why I didn't just make the same number of each color...)
You can can actually see the wreath form in that picture (YAY), and you can also see that it started our dark green, which would probably make sense for a wreath, but in this case, needed to be painted. I thought tan would be the least intrusive, so bye bye green.
Then I assembled the airplanes with the hot glue. This process would have gone much faster if I has purchased the right size glue sticks (and/or wasn't too lazy to drive back to the store to get the right size). I guess the outside coating on glue sticks keeps it from melting until the stick is INSIDE the hot tunnel of the glue gun. My large, cut-into-quarters sized sticks kept melting in the open space and oozing out the side. I had to keep pulling the stick out and cleaning the melted mess (now THAT is what I should have taken a picture of). But finally I finished and had these lovely guys:
The next step was the get the ribbon part together. I figured I'd cut all three spools into pieces, and would figure something out if there was extra pieces at the end. I just pulled all the ribbon off the spool and cut it in half, then kept going till it was a length I liked. Originally I left the ribbon strips long, like in the Pintrest photo, but it only covered the outside ring of the wreath form. Plus I figured I would have to hang the airplanes lower than the ribbon, and I thought it might end up too long. So I cut each strip in half and it ended up covering the outside and middle rows of the form (which worked out better because the middle row was higher than the other two anyway). I'm sure there are plenty of ways to attach the ribbon based on the look you want and how much length of each ribbon strip you want hanging. I went with the fold ribbon in half and stick ends through the loop method, thinking that it would stay on it's own and I wouldn't have to fool with the mismatched glue gun/glue stick thing again. By the next morning all the ribbon was falling off, so I did have to stick a dot of hot glue on the ribbon to make it stay.
After gluing the ribbon I hung my ribbon mobile from a light in the kitchen and fooled with hanging the airplanes. When it came to that I really just eyeballed what looked good. I fiddled with how to tie the airplanes so they hung level but eventually found a way to do it, but don't ask me how- I could not replicate it now if I tried. Then I would hold the string up to the mobile and check out different lengths until it looked good. I did the same with each airplane, then stepped back and looked at it. I did add a few more after I thought I was finished. I'm sure you could go more or less, whatever looks good to you. I did end up with tons of extra airplanes, but I think if I had hung them all, it would have looked too cluttered. Now baby Logan will get airplanes on all his presents for years!
So a million words later, here's what baby Logan will have hanging in his room (I think over the changing table, but Mommy's changed her mind once already!)
Mommy and daddy loved it, and I've been plotting how to make this for other themes... or for girls. I would love to make one with tool at the top instead of ribbon... like a tutu! And maybe make some small fabric pom poms to hang. Oh someone please have a girl soon!!
So Total Cost breakdown is as follows:
Bag of wrong size glue sticks: $9.99
Wire wreath form: $2.49
Tiny glue gun: $2.49
3 Spools of Ribbon @$2.99ea: $8.97
Clear string: $3.49
Bag of mini popsicle sticks: $2.99
Bag of large popsicle sticks: $2.99
Bag of clothes pins: $2.49
3 20oz of craft paint @$0.33ea: $0.99
3 paint brushes @0.39ea: $1.17
___________________________
TOTAL $38.06
but if you assume most crafty people own glue guns and the correct size glue for them, and at least the paint brushes that will take your total to $24.41
And right now I have 3/4 of each tube of paint left, A TON of string, 3/4 of the small popsicle sticks (I started with 150 though), 1/4 of the large popsicle sticks (started with 50), and 1/4 of the clothespins left (started with 24). And if I hadn't painted too many airplanes in the beginning I would probably have half the clothespins and half the large popsicle sticks left. So I probably could have made two mobiles out of the stuff and would have only needed to buy more ribbon for the second one. Adding that in, that brings the total to $16.69 a piece. I don't think you could buy a mobile in the store for that. And it really only took about 2 hours total to do, plus you could totally customize it for whatever theme you needed.
2 comments:
That is so cute. I love how you combined two ideas. Perfect for a little boys room.
Thanks Marci. I have to get the picture of it actually in the nursery up. It looks great in the room!
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