Teeny Tutorial: Origami Bird Mobile

I've got another teeny tutorial for you all!  I really love this one and I'm excited to share it with you!  When I found out I was pregnant I started looking at baby mobiles and found a few that I liked but not a whole lot that I thought would go with my nursery planning ideas (that were in my price range) so I started thinking about what I wanted.  I've always loved paper cranes and origami in general, we even had paper cranes at our wedding.  I knew I wanted cranes to be part of the decor.  I had seen this fabric bird mobile floating around the web and though it was sooo cute, but I wanted something a bit quicker and not as intensive as sewing all those little, albeit cute, birdies.  One day I went out the get the mail and noticed the perfect branch had fallen off our big pecan tree in the front yard.  I immediately picked it up and knew it was "the one."  And the plan was hatched.  Ha!  No pun intended!

Basically all you will need for this tutorial is some pretty paper for the birds (this could be origami paper, scrapbook paper, I used cardstock which was tough to fold but makes a nice sturdy birdy), a good branch (you can leave it natural like I did, or spray paint it the color you want!), a hot glue gun (I guess you could use regular glue but you'd have to hold the bird on there for a while before it dried...), and some string.

First you'll need to fold up a bunch of paper cranes.  It can be a bit tricky if it's your first time, but you can use this handout or watch this video for instructions.

Figure out how you want the branch to hang.  This will determine which side of the branch your birds will attach to, so if your branch is more aesthetically pleasing hanging one way, you will glue the bird to the top of the branch...does that make sense?  Ahem...anyway...once you decide the direction of your branch, you can start hot gluing your birdies on it.  If you want to be super fancy and make a double branched mobile you will glue birds to both branches.  

It's better to use a lot of hot glue, and depending on the angle of the branch you may need to hold the crane on there for a minute or two until it's stable.  I then went around and hot glued the sides and around the bottom just to be safe...

Once the glue dries and the birds are set, you can attach the string.  There are two ways you can do this.  For a single branch mobile, tie the string on each side of the branch, then meet them in the middle to create a triangle and then run the string all the way up to the hook where you will hang the mobile from.  It took me a bit of time to try to figure out the best place to tie the string so the whole thing didn't flop over but I got it eventually.  I had the hubs put a hook in the ceiling and Voila!

Now, just to be safe, you may want to hot glue over your knots a bit just to make sure they don't come undone.  Better to be safe than sorry!