Hiya, This week I've been making a mobile to decorate my craft room using a simplified version of the
Birdhouse Box from Simply Crafty SVGs. I love the shape of this birdhouse design and decided to miniaturise the file and use just the foundation shapes (walls and roof base) to make some light-weight houses for the mobile. This is a great project for displaying your hand decorated papers. I have lots of background papers made from gel printing, but for this project I used paper that I'd decorated with distress inks. I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut all the card and paper pieces, but any cutting machine that uses SVGs could be used instead.
Materials Used
Wooden Mobile Hanger Bracket
AC White Textured Cardstock
Smooth Watercolour Paper
Distress Oxide Inks (Peacock Feathers, Salty Ocean, Wilted Violet & Picked Raspberry)
White Gel Pen
Silhouette Pen Holder
Pink & Turquoise Beads
Turquoise Embroidery Thread
Hand-decorated Paper
Each birdhouse roof is cut from watercolour paper that I'd first damped with water and then painted with Distress Oxide inks, blending each colour into the next. Once it had dried, I stamped a crackle pattern in the Salty Ocean colour over the top. Although I'd taped the paper to a board, it still warped as it dried. My solution was to finish off the drying in my heat press. When it was almost dry, I sandwiched it between clean sheets of paper and applied a little low heat. Then I turned of the press, and left in in the closed press to dry completely.
Sketch and Cut Birds
Using a bird design from the Silhouette Design Store (
#268417) I sketched the outline of the bird in white gel pen onto the decorated paper and then cut an offset around it. I made a duplicate and some mirrored images, and gave each an eye in crystal Nuvo Drops. Then I adhered them back-to-back on a length of embroidery thread. Beads were added at the end of the thread to ensure that the thread would hang straight, pulling out any kinks. These beads were re-purposed from a discarded child's bracelet. N.B. If you were making this for child you'd need to omit the beads and spend more time straightening the thread.
3-Dimensional Clouds
I designed my own 3-D clouds to hang on each thread. Each cloud consists of three identical cloud-shaped pieces with a fold line down the centre of each. Any cloud shape would work so long as it is symmetrical along the fold line.
The clouds were cut from white textured cardstock and the cut edges highlighted with blue oxide ink.
The pieces were folded in half and they were adhered together in sets of three with one side left open. The last sides were stuck with liquid glue around the embroidery thread once the birds and houses had been attached to the threads.
Miniature Bird Houses
I made the houses by reducing the size to 65% of the original.
I used just the house and the roof (without the panels). To keep the weight down, I didn't use the door and frame, but just added a hole in their place, with a simple circle frame around it. The house parts were assembled and two small holes added in the floor, used to attach the thread together with a bead. The the roof was then threaded on and adhered to the house with a bead added on top.
Assembling the Mobile
The four 'house' threads (of identical length), were attached to the mobile hanger arms, and the 'bird' thread was attached to the loop in the centre. The finished mobile is in constant motion and consequently proved somewhat difficult to photograph.
I'm so looking forward to putting this up in my craft room once I've finished tidying and decorating. There is something rather special about having a moving paper craft project on display!
Simply Crafty SVG Files:
Bird House Box
Additional Silhouette Files:
Bird (Fox Sister)
#268417
or
Bird (Fox Sister)
#268416
