DIY Nursery Mobile
Today I’m sharing with you how I created a simple nursery mobile for our little one due November 4th! I was really inspired by these mobile’s from Pehr but the colors offered didn’t quite match my theme plus they cost more than I wanted to spend on a mobile. So I thought I could probably do it myself and make something similar!
Since I was creating this from scratch, I wanted to find the right colors and animals that matched the theme of the room. My husband loves elephants so I thought it’d be cute to incorporate elephants into this mobile. So I started searching for little felt elephants to recreate something similar and came across the cutest elephant garland on Amazon and it all spiraled from there! I loved the little pom-pom strands on the Pehr mobile and found these from Amazon in the colors I wanted. I already had an 8-inch embroidery hoop that I would use as the structure for the mobile and the yarn needed to wrap around it. I ended up using about 30 feet of 48 lb hemp cording. The 48 lb weight matched the thickness of the cord the elephant garland had, so I would recommend going with a matching weight to keep it consistent. Ideally, I also would have re-strung the pom-pom garland with the same cord but that was too much of an effort. The pom-pom’s come with a thin white string that isn’t too noticeable, but if you’d like to really make this look professional and cohesive then get a needle and re-thread it with the same matching cord. The total cost for materials is about $45 and you’ll have some leftover string and pom-poms. It took me about an hour to make the whole mobile and was half the cost of the Pehr mobile! If you love how mine turned out, you can follow along exactly but also if you want different colors or a different animal just use the term “wool felt” when searching to achieve the same handmade look. I made a video showing you the steps to this DIY and have also written down the steps below!
So once you have all your materials ready, start by removing the outer ring of the embroidery hoop and use the inner ring for your structure. Then wrap the cord around the ring and secure it with a dab of hot glue. From here you’ll need to cut apart the elephant garland into 5 equal lengths with the elephant at the bottom. To make sure the elephants didn’t slide off the bottom of the string, I secured them with a dab of hot glue at the spot where I cut from.
Next, you’ll want to place the elephants equally spread out around the hoop. I just eyeballed this and then secured them on with a dab of hot glue. Once the glue cools a bit, you can kind of press it into the string and that helps hide the glue better. The reason I didn’t tie them around the hoop was one, I didn’t have enough string, but two, it looked better to just wrap it once and secure it with a dab of glue on the backside of the hoop.
From here I cut apart the pom-pom garland into 4 equal lengths with 4 pom-poms on each strand. One strand coming from the top and then tie the other three to the top strand. Then figuring out where to perfectly place the 3 pom-pom strands on the hoop was a bit more difficult. You have to place them almost perfectly equal so your mobile isn’t off balance. So just play around with the placement before fully securing them. Even after messing with mine for a bit, it still turned out a bit crooked but let’s just say that’s part of the handmade look we’re going for. Maybe there is a more accurate way to ensure it’s not crooked. If you have any ideas, drop them in the comments below! After you’ve found good spots for the three strands, tie them on and extra secure them with a dab of glue. I don’t plan on actually letting the baby touch and grab at the mobile (does anyone?), just to look at it while we change her diaper, but I still wanted to make sure it wouldn’t come crashing down on her while she’s on the changing table so the hot glue helps keep everything secure.
And that’s it! From here, I attached it from the ceiling with a thumbtack and fishing wire. It’s not a heavy piece at all! You’ll have a leftover embroidery hoop after this project and maybe you’re not quite sure what to do with it. But you can make a second mobile for a friend if you’d like! Just remove the hardware and wrap tape around the part where it opens up. Then you’ll hide the tape with the string when you wrap it around! Let me know in the comments if you try this DIY and what animals and colors you used in yours!