If you’ve seen photos of our nursery, you know that we have a pretty obvious flower theme going on in there, and this flower mobile is the latest addition! I wanted to make this before Daisy was born, but it definitely wasn’t a priority! She didn’t start taking naps in her crib until about 3-4 months, and she just started sleeping in there at night not too long ago, so it ended up being a first Christmas present.
I also thought about just buying a mobile, but it seemed like something that was easy enough to make, and way more affordable to do it myself!
It wasn’t super easy to find the felt balls, but I finally stumbled upon this Etsy shop and found the perfect colours and sizes for the design I was going for. And the rest of the stuff I found at Michaels. All in, it cost around $48 to get the exact design I wanted. I assume you could do it cheaper if you make the felt balls yourself, but I was on a bit of a time crunch!
DIY Flower Baby Mobile Supplies:
- 10 inch Embroidery hoop (separated, using the piece without the metal attachment)
- 4-5 skeins of embroidery floss in the colour of your choice. Possibly more depending on how long you want your tassels
- 1 inch Felt balls – I bought 50 for this design (Ivory (30), soft peach (10), mustard (10))
- Glue gun (not pictured)
- ceiling hook and fishing line to hang, or a mobile arm that attaches to crib
Step 1 – attach embroidery floss to hoop
Start by measuring out each strand for your mobile. I made mine extra long just in case, because it can always be trimmed later! You also want to leave a little extra for the knot at the top, and to double wrap the strand around the hoop.
Make sure your strands are evenly spaced, but since you’re just wrapping them around, you can easily move them later.
In total, my strands were 34 inches long to start, and I wrapped them around the hoop at about 10 inches. After you attach the 4 strands, gather the excess above where you wrapped them and bring them to a point. This is where you’ll add your 5th strand, hanging it down the middle of the hoop. Once you have all 5 gathered together at the top, tie a knot about 8 inches from the hoop.
I added my 5th strand later, which is why it’s not pictured above, but it would have been much easier to add it at the beginning!
Step 2: string felt balls onto each strand
This is the bulk of the work for this DIY mobile, but it was surprisingly easy. Start by threading your floss through the needle. You don’t necessarily need to tie it, just string enough through so that it doesn’t come out. Then push it through the middle of a felt ball, and pull the ball up to your desired height (you can always move them around later). Repeat until each strand is filled and you have the pattern you like. I alternated pink, yellow, pink, white.
Step 3: hot glue the flower petals
This part was also super easy! Test out the spacing of your petals before you do this, so you know how far apart you want them, and use the tiniest blob of glue to attach each white ball to the center yellow ball of your flowers.
Step 4: make and add the tassels
Now it’s time to finish off the mobile by adding tassels, using any colour of embroidery floss. I followed this tutorial to make each tassel, and then tied them on to the end of each string.
Step 5: hang from the ceiling!
We decided to hang ours from the ceiling, but you could totally hang it from a mobile hanger attached to the crib if that’s more your vibe. I attached a piece of clear fishing line to the top of the mobile where I tied the knot. I also added one more felt ball at the top afterwards to hide the knot. We purchased a simple ceiling hook and tied a loop knot at the end of the fishing line to attach it to the hook.
And now you have a sweet sweet little mobile! Daisy loves watching hers just before nap time, and I think it will definitely be something we hang onto as a keepsake for her as she grows. I’m so happy we went this route instead of buying one, because it makes it so much more special!
Let me know below if you end up making one! 💛
Julie
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