Woodland Mobile Tutorial

When Anna was a baby I bought one of those expensive mobiles for her cribs, you know the ones which plays 3 classical music tunes and lights up and spins round & round? Well to be honest, she didn’t really even care that much for it and it totally did not match the decor.

This time around I’m trying to DIY most of the items for the Zenith’s room and save as much money as possible hence why it was a no brainer to try making a mobile for Zenith, and one that would match his room too! Being that the lights and fancy music weren’t a big deal for Anna I decided they weren’t really necessary for Zenith either, and if I really wanted too I could get one of those nifty Twilight Turtles that plays music and casts the constellation on the ceiling; way cooler if you ask me!

Here’s what I came up with!

To get to that point I started off by scouring beloved pinterest to see what I could come up with for a woodland mobile and came up with quite a few sources of inspiration to create mine from although my 3 favourites were this airy, feathery one from wereafterall.com

This rocky mountain one from Felted Gypsy on Etsy; I loved the evergreen trees and clouds!

And this woodland critter one, also via Etsy, by magicalwhimsy.

 

With some inspiration under my belt I set out to creating my mobile. I already had a huge stack of felt to work with and I tore apart an old wreath to use for this project. My only cost was $3 for some twine!

First I had to make a template and after a bunch of trial and error I came up with these guys.

Once I had my basic templates I cut each one out and placed it on a doubled up square of felt and got to cutting. I wanted my critters to be double sided so you wouldn’t see the twine running down the middle of them.

While I did use the template for most of the shapes I decided to just free hand the mushrooms and clouds to make them more unqiue. Also, as I went along I cut out a few additional items like the trunks of the trees, circles and stems for the mushrooms, faces for the fox etc. Each of my shapes would have a “front” and a “back” but with the details only on one side, although you could make them double sided if you like.

Once you have all your pieces cut out you will want to lay them out and figure out your basic plan of how you will want to hang them; I also recommend taking a picture of your layout so you don’t forget their order! I definitely referred back to this picture several times!

Now you get to start gluing! I tried at first using white glue but it was just absorbed by the felt so I turned to hot glue which, although messy, worked out amazingly! One good tip for gluing that I discovered is that any details like the stem on this mushroom (or trunks on the trees) you want on the back of the front piece; since I had glued this guy on the back when I was doing the twine it still came in front of it vs not being visible at all if that makes sense.

Once you have all your little details glued on you get to line your pieces back up and attach the twine. For lengths of twine I just held it up against my wreath and eyeballed a good length for both my set of 4 and set of 3 and cut two of each.

I found it worked best to do one set at a time like so and first attach the twine starting at the bottom, keeping it somewhat tight as you go up the line.

And then attach the fronts to the backs.

Once I finished all my sets I attached 4 pieces of ribbon evenly around my wreath and hung it up to make attaching my sets easier. Once I had the felt shape sets attached I went along and attached a few feathers as well which were also strung onto twine.

And there you have it! It probably took me about 3 hours to make this wreath; most of the time was taken up however with creating my template and cutting out my shapes.

Here’s another angle.

I personally love it and cannot wait to fully start decorating Zenith’s room although we have a lot of renovations to go before he even has one! I’ll be posting up a renovation update on Thursday!

 

P.S. I’ll be sharing this project on the Summer Edition’s Pinterest Challenge hosted by Young House Love, Bower Power, Centsational Girl, and Ten June! Be sure to check it out for tons of amazing inspiration!