When I was preparing for the arrival of our little one, my attention turned to the room that would become his. I went for a Dr. Seuss theme because of the whimsy and colors I could incorporate while keeping things gender neutral. Being rather creative, I decided to look into creating a nursery mobile, DIY style. I came across the Poofie, which is adorable and whimsical and reminded me of the trees in many Dr. Seuss books.
I started with the discarded top of a chandelier that I had made over twice now (the first makeover is detailed in my blog post entitled ‘The Chandelier‘). It was round with spokes, which was something I felt I could work with. I also happened to have wooden beads and letter beads, some chain, fishing wire, newspaper, tape and white wire hangers. The only thing I needed to buy was some fuzzy yarn and I was ready to go.
I started by crafting the fuzzy balls. I crumpled up the newspaper into the desired shape and size and secured it with tape. Then I glued the yarn on. I started on the ends of the balls, creating a spiral with the yarn and carefully placing it on a glob of hot glue. I continued to wind the yarn around the newspaper, gluing occasionally to secure the yarn until the entire ball was covered. I made 12 balls like this.
Then I created the wires to suspend the balls from. I used some white wire hangers, cutting off the hook and then cutting the remaining wire in half. I did this with 3 hangers. Then I took a metal tube and wrapped the wires around one time in the center to create a loop.
After that was finished, I needed to attach the balls to the wire. I used the wire to bore a hole into the ball, then I pulled the wire back out, put a dab of hot glue on the end of the wire and put it back into the hole. I quickly realized that the construction was heavy and unbalanced, so the balls would need to drape down instead of floating out. I bent the wires into a U shape to accommodate the new design concept.
To suspend the wires from the spoke structure, I threaded some beads on fishing wire. I alternated wooden beads and letter beads to create words. I tied the fishing wire around the wire hangers, weaving the end back through the beads to hide it. At the top end I threaded the wire through the hole in the spokes that used to connect it to the chandelier. I added a bead and tied it off to secure it, weaving the end of the fishing wire back through the beads.
Then I just needed to attach the chain to the center of the spokes. I used a bead and some leftover hanger wire to create a link. To hang it up I attached a ceiling hook to the ceiling and hung the chain from it. The result was a fun, whimsical, colorful, DIY baby mobile, which was lovingly suspended (and safely out of reach) over the crib.
