Being crafty

I've been feeling rather antsy this past week or so about getting things ready for baby Sweet T to arrive. There wasn't/isn't much to do, but I have been feeling the need to get things accomplished. Hopefully, that's no indication that she wants to join us any time too soon, but either way, stuff is getting done!

Her crib got set up last weekend (Adelyn has already generously lent a couple of her stuffed friends to help fill the space for now) and last night--thanks in large part to my wonderful friend Whitney for being way better at crafting than I, and my sweet husband who helped point out what we were doing wrong along the way--I finished her mobile.

I made Adelyn's mobile after finding the idea on Pinterest, and while it was a lot more complicated than I expected, it was totally worth it and so cute in the end.

So, I found another idea for a mobile for baby #2, and have been itching to make it since before I was even pregnant with this girl.

This is the picture of the one I modeled my plans after:


Looks simple enough, right?

So, I got supplies:

A ton of paint color samples from Lowes and Home Depot:

A styrofoam hoop, some straight pins, and fishing line:

Got some glue sticks, found a couple of raindrop templates to print and use for cutting my shapes, and then found the bag of fluff leftover from Adelyn's mobile.

First, I cut all of the paint colors into rain drop shapes of two different sizes. My fingers were killing me after about five drops, but I managed to get a lot done and then Nathan chipped in and helped me finish. Then we laid them all out to get an idea of the arrangement:

Whitney came over last night to help with the assembly, and at first we struggled with logistics and took a few minutes to get going. We initially thought we would measure exact lengths of fishing line, distances between drops, and distances between strands on the foam hoop...but we soon decided that was way too complicated, and opted to "eyeball it" instead.

So, we glued a back and front of each raindrop onto long strands of fishing line, four drops per strand. We used a coat hanger to keep all of our strands up off the ground once they were glued, and it helped us visualize things to see the drops hanging also. I have to admit, in the time it took me to do three strands, Whitney did five--she definitely kicked my butt at this whole process. Getting all eight strands done took about an hour, but they were looking great!

Next we had to decide how to make the "cloud" and in which order to do things--attach the strands to the hoop and then make it into a cloud, or flufferize it first and attach strands next. We spent a while brainstorming and trying different plans, and Nathan helped find holes in our plans. Eventually, Whitney had a vision and just started wrapping big pieces of fluff around the hoop and then tying them in place with the fishing line and adding pins as needed. Miraculously, it worked!

Once we had a nice fluffy cloud, we started tying the strands around the hoop and then added strings going up to the hook that will hang the whole mobile from the ceiling. It looked awesome and I wanted to hang it right away, but since Adelyn was sleeping, we had to find a place for it to hang out overnight--so it got to stay in our bathroom where there is conveniently a hook already in the ceiling.

It is now hanging beautifully over her bed. Now I just have one more craft to make for her wall, a lavender crib sheet to find for her bed, and a couple of drawers to stock with small diapers--then we're as ready as we'll ever be!