Guest Post: Paper Mobile

Hello everyone!
I'm happy to introduce my first guest post from Sarah at Renewed Upon a Dream--I am guest posting over at her site today! We both have fun repurposing uses for embroidery hoops today. Hope you enjoy them today!

Hello!  I'm Sarah  I blog over at Renewed Upon a Dream.  I'm so excited to be here guest posting for Kristina!  I LOVE her blog.  Everything she posts seems to be amazing, and her photography is always wonderful.  Wouldn't you agree?  So, I'm super happy to be here today, sharing with you a little project that I did for my cousin who is having her first baby in about a month.  Yesterday on my blog I shared some other little gifts I made for her, but now I'm sharing a pinwheel mobile that I presented her with this past weekend.

I really wanted to try to make a mobile for her, but I pretty much had no idea what I was doing.  I saw a photo recently of some cute pinwheels propped up in some grass for spring, and I thought they looked so cute & would be lovely hanging as a mobile.  It seemed easy enough to create so I went for it.

The supplies I needed were pretty inexpensive:

• Large embroidery/sewing hoop
• Spray paint
• 4 sheets of double sided scrapbook paper
• Some kind of string or twine, I used stretch magic jewelry string
• Hot glue
• Buttons, pearls or whatever you like to put in the center of each pinwheel (I have pictured pearls, but they didn't work with my string, so I switched to buttons)
• Tape

To get started on my project, I first spray painted my embroidery hoop.  I wanted it to be white, and I had just bought a regular wooden one at Michael's.  If you wanted to skip this you could also purchase a colored plastic one if you prefer.

Then I got started on making pinwheels!  I cut my scrapbook paper into 5 inch squares.

I then found the center of each square by measuring 2.5 inches in.  I then cut from each corner, in towards the middle of the paper where I marked.  I tried to cut pretty close to that dot, maybe about a half inch from it.  You want it to be close enough to make a good pinwheel, but not so close that it's going to rip when you bend the paper over.

Once I had my cuts, I folded one corner of each side towards that dot in the middle and taped them together.  I used two pieces of tape, one on the bottom & one on the top.  I was careful to fold it over in such a way so that it wasn't creased, but almost, so that it would stay & lay properly.  If you do this it will probably take a little trial & error, it did for me.


I soon had a bunch of pinwheels all over my table.  I went through each of them & cut off the access tape.

Next I punched a whole in the middle of each pinwheel.  I did this with a little hole puncher I had, but you could probably use a sharp needle too if that's what you have.  I then cut my string.  I cut 8 strings total.  4 were a little bit shorter, and 4 a little bit longer.  On each of them, I strung two pinwheels.  One a little less than halfway from the top, and one at the very bottom.  I secured each pinwheel with a button.

As I made progress with this, I taped completed strings up to my ceiling fan, just to kind of see what they would look like.  It was so fun working with pretty pinwheels above my head!

A couple of days later, once my spray paint was dry, I started attaching my pinwheels to the hoop.  The string that I used is very slippery, so it doesn't hold a knot very well.  If yours does knot well, you can probably skip most of the hot glue.  I attached the 4 shorter strings of pinwheels directly to the hoop.  Then I attached two strings across the loop, so that they crossed in the middle.  I attached the 4 longer strings of pinwheels to those strings going across the loops.  I guess it's kind of hard to explain, so here's a picture, although it's still hard to see, hopefully this helps.

I hot glued every string at their tie on point for extra reinforcement.  Then I attached a couple pieces of yarn to hang it from, and I was done!

How cute is this!?  I really love it.  I kind of want one in my home & I don't even have any babies!

Pinwheels are so fun & spring-y!

Have you ever made a mobile before for a baby.  What do you think of making one with pinwheels?

I really hope you liked this project.  It's been baby-mania this month over on my blog.  My friend is pregnant too & I made her a baby afghan & refinished a dresser into a changing table for them!  Check 'em out if you're interested!  Thank you so much Kristina for having me here!