{PROJECTS // star mobile}

Last year, after the Christmas season, I went clearance shopping as usual. At Hobby Lobby, I managed to score a pack of make-your-own paper Christmas ornaments. There were four styles of ornaments, and each style was made out of two sided paper. Two of the styles had shiny gold paper on one side, a set of flowery medallions, and a set of cute little puffy stars. Originally I started out with the intent to use all of these as ornaments. But once I saw those stars I had one thought in mind.

A mobile for the baby girl on the way.
It was pretty simple to make so I thought I'd share it with you. It would be pretty easy to copy if you could either find or figure out how to make the gold stars.

Here are the items I started with. Seven gold stars, embroidery thread and needle, some navy material, and an embroidery hoop.

 To begin, I poked a hole in the top of each star with the needle and then threaded cut embroidery floss through each hole. I had cut each piece of thread one inch shorter than the last, starting at 22 or 24 inches long.

 Next I eyeballed and marked where each star would hang from the inside hoop. Then I hot glued them in place, starting with the shortest star and going around the hoop in the same order as pictured above.

 Next I made the hanger. I had these little wooden beads with one hole in the middle, but I think you could use a button in a similar way. I cut four equal pieces of thread, tied them to the hoop, and then tied and hot-glued them evenly onto the bead. After that, I measured how far it would be from the ceiling in the kids room to the top of the hanger. This would vary on how tall your ceilings are, how low you want to hang the mobile and such. I actually left a really long string and simply tied a big slipknot so that it's adjustable. Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of that part.

To finish the mobile, I cut a long, skinny piece of the navy fabric and hot-glued it onto the hoop as I twisted around and around. That covered the hoop, and the ends of the strings.

Now it hangs in the kid's room above the pack-n-play, which is set up for Evelyn's bed when I move her out of our room. Sometimes she'll lay in there during the day and watch the sun catch the stars and reflect them on the walls. I love the way it turned out!