DIY Custom Mobile and a Peek into Emma's Nursery

For as long as I have been wanting to plan a nursery I knew that I didn't want it to be a cookie cutter from the store bed in a bag look. I planned out Emma's nursery dreaming of when she would sleep and play in it. I wanted something that would grow with her but still be graphic, fun and have a sense of playfulness.

That being said I couldn't find a mobile that I liked at all. I knew that I would have to make one. But I couldn't figure out what style I liked. I thought that I may just buy some wooden animal shapes and paint them in the teal, pink and grey color scheme and hang them on a makeshift hangar. Or just settle for something that was purchased, because I honestly didn't think that I would have time with a baby to make something cool. I was saving tons of ideas to a nursery board on Pinterest but nothing was making me scream out "This is perfect!" So I dropped it from my mind for months. It wasn't until I was looking for things to make with the leftover felt that I had from Emma's Halloween costume that I found it. A ceiling mobile kit from Apostrophe-S. It was made with felt and cardstock, but you had to buy the whole kit and even though everything was ready and all I would have to do is assemble, I thought to myself...."Self, you can make that!"

The weekend we moved into our new apartment, my mom and I hit up Michael's with coupons to get the extra things I needed. Wooden planting rings (18", 12", 6"), craft paint, grey felt (I had the pink) and beads. I had plenty of embroidery floss on hand and my mom brought the other items needed to help make these.

I don't have a tutorial for exactly how I made this, but I can give you the steps. First off I scaled in Photoshop the shape for the hangars. Then we traced them onto freezer paper and cut them out. We needed 36 pink and 20 grey to make them doubled when completed.

We used an iron on adhesive to press the felt pieces together, but you can use any type of fabric glue to get them together. We used embroidery floss to string the rings together and to attach each shape to the wooden rings. We also hung two beads to the tops of each pink shape. Darin needed to drill extra holes into the rings, to make it evenly spaced (which he had to buy a new drill for, he was ecstatic) and then hot glued the strings in place on the top. It's not pretty from above, but who sees that anyways. Figuring out placement of each tier took some finagling but the end result was far better than I could have imagined.

It took far longer to accomplish than I thought and between feedings and napping and fussy baby wanting my attention I didn't take photos along the way to show the steps. My apologies. Hopefully you can use my haphazard directions to make your own mobile. If you have any questions shoot em my way!

And now a peek into the nursery!

What?! It's still not done! I have things to hang and some things to put away and then I will reveal it all to you....just thought you'd want a teaser!