Sweet DIY Butterfly Mobile

Here's my latest project, made for the cherry blossom nursery we just painted for friends:

This is quite possibly the girliest thing I have ever made, but what can I say? I love me some Swarovski crystals.

Spaaaaarkly.

This wasn't too hard to do, and other than the crystals, cost very little to make. If you substitute cheaper beads for the crystals, you should be able to make your own for $15 or less.

Here's how:

Julianne, the new mom-to-be, had an old but never used Winnie-the-Pooh mobile stashed in the closet, which gave us the perfect base to build on. It looked like this:

I've noticed a lot of mobiles are like this: plain plastic with stuffed animals hanging off the arms. Take the toys off, and you've got a perfect blank slate to work with. (And fortunately Julianne's two-year-old loves WtP, so the toys won't go to waste.)

Of course, you don't need a mobile at all: you can also hang this from the ceiling with ribbon. The wind-up mobile base just allows it to rotate and play music.

Oh, and remember how I said the mobile is old? Yeah, look what we found in the box:

LOOK AT THAT WOMAN'S DRESS.

That is all.

Ok, to start we need a grapevine wreath to fit on the mobile arms. Actual grapevine wreaths tend to be too thick and twiggy (you don't want branches cracking off and falling into the crib), so instead, get some brown wrapped floral wire (which looks exactly like branches, btw) and make your own:

I started by wrapping the wire around a five-gallon bucket (which was the perfect size for the mobile) four or five times, then had John help me hold it all together while I spiraled the wire around the ring once to secure it.

Next bend two long sprays of silk blossom branches into half circles, and wrap them in more wire to attach them to the wreath:

Ta-da!

I was amazed by how quick and easy this was to do. Now I'm tempted to make some cute floral tiaras for our next Ren Fair! That big bundle of wire was only $3, the floral spray was $5, and between the two you could easily make at least four or five "crowns." Hmm....

Getting back to our mobile: Use more of that fabulous branch wire to attach the wreath to each of your four mobile arms:

It's hard to see, but I made my strip of wire into a "U," brought that up from under the white mobile arm, and then wrapped each edge around the wreath. It's completely secure; the wreath won't budge no matter how hard I try to wiggle it.

Ok, the base is done - now to the butterflies!

If you have a butterfly punch (or better yet, several in different styles), use those.

If you *don't* have a butterfly punch, do what I did: buy two sheets of laser-cut butterfly paper from the scrapbook aisle for a dollar each. (I found mine at JoAnn's, but sadly it's not on their website. Drat.)

My way will take a little more work, but it's also only $2 to get 5 different styles of butterflies. Not too shabby.

As far as I know these particular sheets only come in blue, so before cutting them, paint them in the high gloss spray paint of your choice:

The high-gloss gives the butterflies a thick, shiny coating that makes them look like enameled metal. Paint both sides to make the card stock super durable. (I'd advise painting your punched butterflies, too, but of course that's up to you.)

Now the hard part:

Cutting out each butterfly was harder than I expected since the design overlaps, forcing you to choose which butterflies you want to save and which to cut through to salvage the others. Tricksy. Just take your time & use a pencil to sketch out the harder areas.

Then use a ruler & the blunt edge of some scissors to make a crease and fold all the wings up.

When you're done, your work space should look something like this:

Next: Prepare for stringing.

Attach the mobile to a chair so you can gauge the height of your strings as you go. You don't want them too long, so aim for the length of the original hanging toys.

To string your butterflies, you'll need:

(Plus some small pliers.)

That's non-stretchy bead cord/mono-filament on the green roll. Make sure it's NON-stretchy. In the plastic tub are crystals and tiny crimp beads, which you'll need lots of. Fortunately they're cheap and easy to find in the bead section of your local craft store. (Buy the smallest size crimps, which I believe was 1.3mm.)

Balance each of your butterflies upside down on a needle to find the sweet spot where it hangs level, and then pierce the paper with the same needle. Keep the holes tiny.

Start each strand with a crimp bead (use small pliers to crimp them in place) then start layering from the bottom up with your butterflies and crystals or beads. Sandwich the butterflies tightly between two crimp beads to ensure they hang level.

Make as many strands as you like, keeping the arrangement somewhat random. I made sixteen, most of which had three butterflies and two crystals on them. The rest had two butterflies and one crystal.


You can hang each strand as you go or wait until you've made them all. Your choice. Knot each strand securely around a single "branch" of the wreath and top the knot with a dab of superglue, just to be safe. Then trim the strand edges, and stand back to admire your work!


I had a hard time photographing the finished product; most of my walls are too light to show the contrast very well. Here's a few more shots taken in my office:

And now a quick video of it in action, just to show the butterflies don't tangle up as it spins:

(Turn your sound down, unless you want to be blasted with Winnie-the-Pooh music box chimes.)

I hope you guys like it! I'll have more pics of the mobile in the nursery once it's completely finished, since I may have one or two more little projects for it, assuming Julianne will let me. (I'm not having kids, so I basically horn in on all of our friends when *they* do. So far none of them seem to mind too much. :D)


*****

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