DIY Butterfly Mobile

I knew that I wanted to make my little girls nursery unique, fun and bright, and what better way to achieve that than make your own decor.   I'm not someone that really likes the cookie cutter crap they sell in the big chain stores and I would much rather something different and personal, and I really wanted that for my baby's room too.  So I decides to make my own mobile instead of buying a mass produced one that everyone and their mother had in their nursery.

I was originally going to find a cool looking fallen down branch in the woods to hang the butterflies from but my mom had an extra embroidery hoop that needed mending lying around, so I used that instead.  You can be as creative in the process and tools to make it as you want to be and use whatever you have on hand.  This is what I used and how I made this adorable mobile to hang above the baby's crib.

Supplies:

• Embroidery hoop or any thing to suspend the butterflies from
• Fishing line
• Ribbon of your choice to wrap the embroidery hoop
• Hot glue gun
• Glue stick
• Scissors
• Scrapbook paper of varying colors and prints
• Butterfly shaped paper punch or any shape punch you desire
• A thumb tack
• A hook to hang it from

I started out by hot gluing the ends of the embroidery hoop together again and then proceeded to hot glue the end of the ribbon to the backside of the hoop to hide where the seems are.  Then I wrapped the entire hoop with the ribbon and slightly overlapped the ribbon as I went to ensure proper coverage.  Once I came to the end, I simply hot glued the end of the ribbon to the back side so no one could see it.  This is what it looked like when I finished wrapping it.

Then I looped together three pieces of the same sized fishing line to make a loop for the mobile to be hung from, and then I tied them equally around the hoop so that the hoop is evenly suspended.  I cut out a bunch of butterflies using various printed and colored scrap paper to make a very colorful and fun mobile.  The printed paper was white on the back so I doubled the amount of those so that it would have the print on both sides.  Using varying lengths of fishing line I began to string the butterflies on the line making double or triple knots to hold the butterflies in place and a thumb tack to make a hole through the middle of the butterfly to be string the line through.  I knotted the top of the butterfly too just to keep it in its place.  For the printed butterflies I used a glue stick on the white side and stuck it to the fishing line and then overlapped the same print butterfly on top so that the print would show on both sides.  Once I had strung up 3 or 4 butterflies per line I tied them to the hoop and continued all the way around until it was full of floating butterflies. And that's all it took to make!  Super easy and cute.

After it's all put together, then I found the perfect spot over miss girls crib and hung it with a hook, and voila!! There you have it, a precious mobile for her to entertain herself in between sleep.    Here's the final product:

~Megan~