Fun Fern Mobile Dupe
Long time no see my Hometalk friends! This year has been crazy on so many levels for everyone, and for us it was no exception. I started a healthcare consulting company at the same time the pandemic hit, so I've been working to build that up. That means less time and money for projects!
THEN. I discovered I was expecting twins by way of an ER visit where I lost one of the original triplets (3 down to 2) - it was a lot to process. A twin pregnancy comes with its own fantastic side effects - like the doubling down of everything a normal singleton pregnancy brings. Needless to say, getting out of bed to work on growing my company has been about all I can do up until recently.
However, I decided that I would join in on the Better Homes and Gardens' One Room Challenge yet again to force me into a schedule on flipping the guest room (I did that over the spring) into a twin nursery. While most of my projects are pretty big builds, I have decided to scale back - for obvious reasons haha!
To see where we started with this room, check out my reveal post on my blog - Spring One Room Challenge Reveal.
If you want to see the whole picture in my head, check out the intro post where I talk through my ideas.
Mood board aside, one of the simple projects I wanted to tackle was to save myself some money on a woodland themed mobile that wasn't too cutesy. I am going to be in there for SO MANY HOURS of the next year. I want to enjoy the room as much as my boys (yes, two boys!! At one time)!! I found one for sale on Etsy, but they wanted something like $90 for it. With my limited budget that was not really an option. So, I thought I would get crafty.
Above is the inspiration photo - I loved the simplicity of it! I used this as a pattern for my own version, which I detail below.
I eyeballed this measurement, but estimated how long the cord would need to be in order to be doubled up, then gathered at one central point and ran upward to hang a short distance from the ceiling. I don't want these to hang too low so they don't try to stand up and hang off of them.
For this, double up your cord and run it behind your hoop. Pull the loose strands of the cord through the loop that you see. When you gather them together, use a separate piece of cord to tie what is called the “gathering knot”. I totally had to reference YouTube videos for this – here you go.Now, you have your four sets of cords gathered up in a knot that can slide up and down depending on your preference.
Use floral wire to place individual fern pieces (pulled from the garland) and eucalyptus pieces around the hoop. Make sure you wrap the wire tightly and tie it off after about 4-5 loops. That’s at least what I did, and I’m no florist.You may want to add a few touches of hot glue here and there to make sure some of the heavier pieces have more than one secured contact point.Step 4: Unravel a few of the cordsAt this point, the cords that are drawing up and in that gathering knot have several long strands available to choose. I chose 4 strands and unraveled them (my cord consisted of three fiber strands twisted together). These will hold your wooden beads.Step 5: String Your BeadsString the unraveled strands of fiber through the wooden beads, tying a knot at the end. I used three beads per strand. This results in about 12 fiber strands with beads on the end.Step 6: Strategically weave your strands to relocate the beadsFor this step, I had to kind of get creative… the strands of fiber hang over the gathering knot. The first thing I did was do a simple knot at the bottom of the gathering knot where the four support cords branch off. This helped to keep the bead strands from hanging loosely. I ran four of the bead strands along the support cords and looped them over the wooden hoop.The remaining strands I weaved around the support cords so that they would dangle beads about halfway down the cords. I also varied this so that a few were hanging directly down in the center (those were a bit longer).Trim off the excess fiber and you have yourself a DIY Fern Mobile for your cute little woodland nursery!
Making two of these little guys cost way less than the $90 for the single fern mobile - while it took me a little bit of time, I would gladly invest my time rather than money making something like this!In my cost estimates, I divided the cost of each garland in two (I could have probably even made three). I also ordered a HUGE bulk-sized roller of macramé cord, which was way overkill - so, I priced it at Michael's for a much more reasonable amount.We have a few more projects left to go over on my blog, so hop on over to check out my extremely slow, taking it one day at a time progress on this nursery. 
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Sweet! So sorry for the loss of one of your triplets, best wishes
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Thank you - we are all doing great now, the boys started crawling this week!
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Glad to hear it, mobility sure changes the dynamics of things! Enjoy đź’•
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Is this supposed to be a wreath?