Crafting for Baby

When I had Emmett, I wanted to make something special for his baby room. I decided to make an awesome pinwheel mobile. I wish I had a picture of it to share. It was huge and looked like an art installation. I believe we ended up leaving it at our old house, and I hate that.
Needless to say, I wanted to make something special for Oliver. I searched Pinterest and Etsy for inspiration ideas for his mobile. His room has a theme of the outdoors, foxes, and arrows, so that's the direction I went. I decide to create a Felted Fox and Arrow Mobile. I wasn't very difficult and doesn't take any crazy items or special skills. Everything can be bought at Joann's or your local craft store.

Felted Fox and Arrow Mobile

• felt sheets (dark & light gray, orange, turquoise, and white)
• ribbon (orange, white, turquoise, and green)
• twine
• 3 sticks (18" long, free from your favorite tree)
• hot glue gun
• poly fill
• scissors
• 6 buttons (small matching buttons for the foxes eyes and nose)

Draw you templates for the fox, tree, mountain, and triangles. Cut out four of each fox head and body, tree, mountain, and arrow tips & tails. Cut out a bunch of triangles. From the scraps, I cut out some stripes and wiggles for the mountain, tree, and arrow tails. Cut out the white for the fox's eyes and belly. 

Using your hot glue gun, glue the front side to the back side of each character, but remember to leave and opening in which you will "stuff" them. Once they are glued well and have cooled, put a little poly fill in each character and glue shut. 

Glue the fox's head to his body. Refer to the picture above to see what I cut out prior to gluing. Glue the arrow tips and tails to the sticks. Glue ribbons and buttons onto the characters.  I did the character's ribbon length as one long (18") and one short (14"). Glue the triangles to the ribbon, the same length (18" - 20"). I only put the triangles on one side of the ribbon. 

Tether the three "arrows" together into a triangle tying the tail of one near the tip of another with twine, see on picture above. Tie twine which will be used to hang to mobile to the arrows. 

Glue the ribbons with the characters and triangles to the sticks. On each stick you should have a character, triangle ribbon, and another character. Once they are all attached, TADA! You did it! Congrats on your awesome handmade mobile.  

Note: I recommend investing in a good, dual heat, hot glue gun. They don't cost much and are SSOOO much better than the $5 cheapo from Walmart. I have this one here. I use it on low 90% of the time and it works fantastic.

Feel free to comment if you have any questions. Thanks and have a great last day of 2016!