DIY :: Restoration Hardware-Inspired Baby Mobile

I hope you all had a fun and festive New Years Eve! Our weekend was very laid back and yet somehow I'm still tired! Guess that comes with the territory. We did get a lot of work done on the nursery so today I wanted to share one of my favorite parts... the mobile!

I have been so incredibly picky throughout this nursery planning process that I've basically forced myself into DIY projects, and this baby mobile is one of them. And though it has been a slight pain for this perfectionist to balance this thing, I'm so happy with the way it turned out!

Initially I had my eye on Restoration Hardware's Wool Felt Night Sky Mobile, and though it was a reasonable price, tacking on shipping for something I felt like I could make myself put it over budget.

Then I remembered a friend of mine who made a wool felted bear mobile for her sweet little babe's nursery (see the amazing tutorial here, she is seriously SO talented!) and it gave me the idea to go with the wool felted stars. I ended up ordering the stars from the Etsy shop Handmade Only, which specifically sells felted wool shapes that are so cute and saved me a ton of work!

What you will need:
Wool Felted Shapes (I ordered 15 stars total, but used only 13, in the colors light grey, white, and french blue)
1 Dowel Rod (the thinnest you can get, found in the wood section of craft stores)
Ceiling Hook
Extra Strength Thread + Needle
Hot Glue Gun

One. Prep the dowel rods + Plan the star placement
 
I used a box cutter to cut the dowel rod into pieces. The longest is 12" and the other 3 pieces are 6" each. Spray paint the rods if you don't want the natural wood color.

Once you've got your dowel rods cut, plan how you want the mobile to look. I added more stars after taking this photo.

Three. Thread the wool stars

Fabric swatch is there so you can see better how I tied the string

Using one long piece of thread (do not double it as if you were sewing), tie 2 or 3 knots on one end and tie the other end to your needle. The knot will keep your wool star from sliding off. Thread each star, or group of stars.

Four. Tie the thread + stars onto dowel rods

The biggest pain with this project is getting the whole thing to balance. I had the stars threaded and ready to go for weeks but kept putting off the final process of putting this thing together.

Tying your strings on the dowel rods (making sure they are roughly the same length) ended up being the easy part. Tie 3 or 4 knots to make sure the thread is secure. Once I was sure about the placement and length of the string, I trimmed the extra thread and put a tiny dot of hot glue on the knot to keep it secure.

For the long dowel rod, just tie one piece of thread to each end so it will look like a triangle when hung.

Five. Balance the mobile

After everything is tied, hang the mobile up on a nail in the wall (or something else to get it off your flat surface) and start to balance it. The dowel rods will tilt if its not balanced, so its just a process of shifting the thread to the left or right, depending on which way the rod tilts. 

Six. Hang the mobile

Take a very long piece of thread, loop it through the "triangle" you made with the thread and long dowel rod, and tie the end. Attach it to a ceiling hook where you want to hang the mobile and you're done! The mobile will move on its own (and your dog may bark at it from time to time), but since we used very thin thread, it will be very delicate and won't stick out like a sore thumb in the room.

This may seem a little confusing but I swear its pretty darn easy, aside from the balancing part, so feel free to email me or comment if you have any questions!