After going to a friend’s baby shower where everyone was invited to help make special crafts for the baby, I knew I wanted something interactive and crafty at my shower. I love the idea of having something in memory of all my friends and family coming together to welcome the person who would change my family forever! I’m also lucky to have insanely talented and creative friends, which doesn’t hurt.

Because we chose to not find out the sex of the baby we were pretty limited to green, yellow, orange, and brown for colors and decided to go with an owl/forest theme for the room. Finding cool and well-designed things that fit this theme and color palette was difficult,  so I decided to design a mobile for us to make.

First I designed the owls, birds, and mushrooms on paper and made templates for each piece. I then used these to trace out each pattern onto a sheet of balsa wood. I chose this for the pattern pieces because it’s cheap and easy to cut. I bought mine at Michaels. After tracing, I cut out each piece with scissors.
I labelled each piece to make it clear for my helpers and then ground down the edges of each with my dremel so they were nice and smooth.

I used the templates to cut out different pieces of scrapbook paper in various colors and patterns and glued them together with Tacky Glue. I made sure to have a face and back for each item so it never looked unfinished. Then at the shower I had at least one finished example for each item sitting out with tons of paper, scissors, etc. Here are my awesome friends working their magic:

I took all the parts and applied two coats to the front and back of each with Mod Podge to protect them and add a bit of shine. And here is a close up of the final result!

I put it all together using some wooden wreathes, twine-wrapped metal, hemp cord, super glue, and beads. I almost didn’t do the beads, but we put this next to a window and it really glows when the sun hit it and he found it mesmerizing. I absolutely love it and so does Julian! The only downfall is that it didn’t turn, so we were able to fix that by directing a hairdryer at it.. it was the only thing that made him sleep for a few months!