The Evolving Cloud Mobile

It was probably close to a year ago that I saw this picture on Pinterest and decided I wanted to do something similar in our nursery.

taken from Pinterest.com

Instead of having the cloud and raindrops over the changing table, though, I always envisioned it as the mobile above the crib. My first plan for the mobile - formed more than a year ago when we were pregnant with Sam - was to make it entirely out of cardboard, using boxes we already had in the basement from when we moved to Berryville. I was also going to use white and blue paint that we already had, resulting in a free mobile other than fishing line and hanging hardware. This remained the plan for a long time, since we weren't really working on the nursery for a long time and then since I saved the mobile for (basically) last.

I grabbed some cardboard from the basement and drew out my cloud, using the crib as a loose reference for how big to make it and tweaking a lot as I went.

When I read Young House Love's blog post about making Teddy's mobile, though, Sherry mentioned that she actually laid down in the crib after they had hung the mobile to make sure that it looked interesting from the underside (what would be Teddy's view). I never crawled into our crib, but it did make me rethink the completely flat - although free - cardboard design I'd been planning. The point of the mobile is to give the baby something interesting to look at while he or she falls asleep, after all. So I started thinking again.  

My second plan was to make the cloud out of fabric, filling it with poly fill like a pillow, and to make the raindrops out of blue string that had been decoupaged and allowed to harden around a balloon that was later popped. I decided to use a thick white canvas (purchased from Hobby Lobby, of course), and used the cardboard cloud as a template to cut out my fabric. I contemplated using a friend's sewing machine for a few minutes, but since neither my friend nor I have used a sewing machine since the 7th grade, I decided it wasn't really the time to relearn that skill on such small, tight curves. So I opted to hand sew, and it looked AWESOME...

 
...until I flipped it inside out and stuffed it with poly fill. That didn't look awesome. That looked...that looked awful.

As it turns out, I didn't do such a great job keeping my stitches tight or following the curves of the cloud. There was stuffing sticking outside of holes where there were gaps in my stitching, but the bigger issue was that it didn't even come close to keeping its shape. And I was not a fan of this new shape it had taken on. The real killer is that after I decided to chuck this guy and start over with a different route, I saw a million examples on Pinterest and such that didn't have the fabric turned inside out and instead just left the flat, rough edges. So I probably could have kept it that way and been fine, but once I turned it inside out and stuffed it it was clearly not fine.

So I went back to the drawing board yet again after some Pinteresting for thoughts and inspiration...and ended up in a place similar to where I had originally started out. Here was my inspiration picture:

taken from Pinterest.com

For my third plan, I went back to the cardboard, this time making two clouds that I would fit together origami-style like the clouds in the inspiration picture. 

Once I had two identical clouds (I used the first one as a template to draw the second one), I grabbed some white paint from the basement and painted them. It took several coats, but eventually I had two really pretty white clouds.  

To cut the slits that would fit the clouds together, I used the ruler to find the halfway point from top to bottom, and cut one cloud from the bottom up and the other cloud from the top down. 

It took some wiggling and manhandling to get the pieces to fit together, but eventually they did and I loved how they looked. When the babe came home from Florida, though, his reaction went something like this: "I love this! It looks so good! You know what would make it look even better and last longer? If we made it out of wood instead!" I'll be honest...my first thought was something like this:

But my second thought was that he was definitely right, and that it would be really cool to have him be a part of one of the nursery projects. So...we started again.

Our fourth plan was to make two clouds that would fit together origami-style just like the cardboard ones, but this time out of a very thin plywood we found at Hobby Lobby. Unfortunately, wood is a little bit trickier to cut and deal with than cardboard. The babe used his Dremmel tool to cut out the clouds - after I drew them, using the first cloud as a template for the second once again - and then sanded them all down so all edges would be rounded and smooth.

Many acrobatics were used. 

Once they were both cut out, we measured again to find the spots to cut the slits...but this time the babe put a lot more thought into it than I did with the cardboard and made sure that slits were cut in a place that would allow the clouds to hang evenly and balanced. That meant that the slits weren't necessarily in the center.  

I forgot to take pictures of the clouds painted white, because at this point I was lucky to remember to take pictures of anything. Several coats were used once again, as well as quite a bit of touching up, but eventually we had pretty white clouds once more. We super glued them together and then used wood putty to fill in any gaps, painting over the wood putty once it dried. 

Next step was the rain drops, which had always been planned but just never had gotten a chance to exist. 

 I mixed up some glue water, covered the string with the mix, and wrapped it randomly around the little balloons the babe blew up for me (fun fact: I lack the skill of blowing up balloons). I'll be honest, even though this had been my plan all along, once I got started on it I wasn't really too sure whether it would work. I wasn't convinced they would look like raindrops once we popped the balloons. And then I wasn't sure the string would dry to a hard enough consistency to maintain shape very well without the balloons. After letting them sit overnight, though, they were plenty hard enough and with some careful wiggling and gentle scootching, the babe was able to pop the balloons and pull them all free from the string. They weren't the most amazing looking things in the world, but they would work just fine.

Next step was to drill very tiny holes along the bottom of the clouds, one for each of the raindrops, so we could tie fishing line through. We also drilled holes at the top of the clouds (two on each cloud, for four contact points total) to string fishing line through to hang the whole mobile. The babe knotted each piece of fishing line after stringing it through the holes and then super glued each knot for added reinforcement (this isn't something we want falling once it's hung). He then super glued each piece of fishing line to a rain drop and they were done! All that was left was the top.

He tied all four pieces of fishing line that had been woven through the top together in a knot, and then super glued it for added reinforcement. We still needed something to hang on the hook we bought for the ceiling, so he tied a second knot, super glued it, and waited for it to dry.

We used this hook - white, to blend into the ceiling a little bit better - and followed the directions for screwing it into the ceiling once we measured the spot that was dead center above the crib and also in a stud (because, once again, we don't want this thing falling on our child). Once that was done, we got to hang it!

I'm not sure that those raindrops were really what I envisioned - even though, to be fair, they're actually exactly what I envisioned - but they do the trick just fine. And, like the babe pointed out last night, they're super glued to the wood so I'm stuck with them. And I'm fairly confident that they look pretty sweet from the crib view (I'm not climbing in to see for myself though). Truth be told, I really do love the mobile. The babe's idea of switching to wood was great; it's sturdier and looks better and will last longer than the cardboard.

There's really not too much left to get done in the nursery now, which is awesome since we are now officially less than a month away from the due date. I can't even tell you how great it feels to cross this guy off the list!

Here's the nursery to-do list now:

• 1 Samuel 1:27-28 chalkboard
• quote for inside side table frame
• hang all pictures 
• turn green bottle into a lamp
• recover lamp shade? new lamp shade?
• prime dressers
• sand side table
• sand cube organizer
• paint dressers white
• paint side table white
• paint side table drawer pull silver
• paint cube organizer
• make mobile for over crib
• paint metal pail for books
• clean out closet and closet drawers
• clean out dresser drawers
• line dresser drawers with contact paper
• organizers for inside of dresser drawers
• storage system and bins
• basket(s) for cube organizer
• get small lamp for changing table
• metal trash can for diapers
• basket with liner for hamper
• shelf over storage system?
• new overhead light?
• art piece above changing table
• hang large frame for showers
• make crib skirt
• buy new blackout curtains

There's a couple other odds and ends that are left, but those last three are the biggies. So ready to get everything crossed off my master "before baby comes" list, but we're getting really close! Only a handful of things left and they will hopefully be knocked out in the next week, leaving the last couple weeks wide open to relax and wait for Baby!