I went into crazy nesting mode when I was pregnant with my daughter. I may have gone a little crazy with the number of things I changed or did around the house, but by far my favorite was the nursery, and the decorative accents that went into making her room so special.
First is the Mobile I made to hang over her crib. These you can actually buy on Etsy and I think people charge between $75- $100. If you're not crafty then just save yourself the time and struggle and buy one that someone else handmade! But if you are crafty, this was actually relatively simple, and you'll save yourself some money because they materials are rather inexpensive, it's just time consuming because you really want to make sure it's safe to hang over the crib. That was the other reason I didn't just buy one, because I don't trust other people to make it as secure as I knew I would.
Materials:
Green Foam Floral Wreath - https://www.michaels.com/extruded-foam-floral-wreath-green/M10103227.html?dwvar_M10103227_color=Green&dwvar_M10103227_size=14%20in#q=green+foam+ring&pmpt=qualifying&sz=24&start=37
2 Spools of thick white (or color of choice) ribbon. I used a solid satin and then also a lace for detail.
1 Spool of thin white (or color of choice) ribbon.
C-hook that can screw into the ceiling.
Glue gun and glue
Fake Flowers of your choice - probably around 4- 5 bunches
Wire cutters
Scissors
Fishing Line
Step by Step :
Once you have all your materials you're going to want to clean off a rather big surface and lay everything out, and plug in your glue gun to get it ready.
First step is to take your solid ribbon and wrap the entire green foam ring. Make sure you are wrapping it so that the ribbon overlaps and you're not seeing any of the green. It is helpful as you go around, to add a dollop of glue as you get to about 1/4 of the way, 1/2 of the way, and 3/4 of the way around to hold the ribbon in place.
Once you have finished with the solid ribbon you can add your lace ribbon on top of it. You don't have to add the lace but it looks very pretty if you do, although to be honest once the whole thing is done your baby will be the only one really able to see the lace, so ... your choice. I didn't wrap the entire thing with lace but rather loosely wrapped it so there was about a two inch gap of just satin ribbon in between. Again add hot glue to hold in place.
While that glue dries you can cut your flowers. You will need to wire cutters as most fake flowers require them to cut. Cut the flower heads off of each and arrange them in piles so you can easily see how many of each you have left as you go. You can also cut the smaller pieces for accents and the small flowers to hang from the mobile. I would leave about an inch of flower stem from the head of the flower to make sure you can glue it on the way you want, you may end up cutting them off all together depending on the type of flowers you got but to be safe, leave them on for now.
Then pick your flowers one by one and add them onto the wreath, using the hot glue. You may find it easier to attach different flowers different ways but for the most part what I did was glue them onto the top of the wreath, with the flower heads pointed at a slight downward angle so that the bulbs end up sitting right in the middle of the wreath, as pictured above. This way someone looking at it head on will only see the flowers and you will hang it with the top up so you can't see the glue. Your baby underneath will see the lacy ring, bottoms of the flowers, as well as the ones that hang down.
Alternate between the flowers, making sure not to put any matching ones next to each other. It looks best if you alternate colors and sizes if possible. Once you're done with the bigger flower bulbs you can go back through and fill in any open space that might be showing with additional smaller accent flowers. But for the most part the bigger flowers should cover the entirety of the wreath, if not you might want to get some more bigger flowers. I also cut pieces of the greenery from the flower stems and glued them behind the bigger flowers as small accents and found it was a nice contrast to all my white and pink and purple flowers.
Also make sure after all your glue is dried, that you go back and add more, you really really have to make sure those suckers are on there because the last thing you want is for one to end up in the crib where your child sleeps. And if you do it right that will not happen! Trust me I'm the biggest worrier ever and I would have been up nights had I not checked and double checked these flowers before hanging it. I tried even ripping them off the wreath to make sure they weren't going anywhere.
That leads to me adding the hanging flowers. Again it is imperative that this is done correctly and is very secure. The only thing worse than fake flowers ending up in your babies crib is fishing line ending up in your babies crib!!!! So what I did was I tied the fishing line around the wreath (strategically placing in between the flowers to best hide where you're attaching it) tying a double knot, and then putting hot glue on the knot attaching it to the wreath, and then do that again. Trust me after you do that twice that fishing line isn't moving. You are then going to want to do the same thing on the end with the flowers. Tie the fishing line around the base of the flower (this can be tricky and won't work with every flower, but you should have a few you're able to do this with) and very carefully pull the knot tight. Add hot glue to the knot on the flower and hold as it dries. Once dry you can do another knot and add more glue to further secure the hanging flowers as well. Again once these are finished and each flower is dry, you need to pull on each one to make sure that they're secure and not going anywhere. My daughter can basically hang on these things and they don't budge.
Oh also, I did have the flowers hanging down further when my daughter was first born, they hung lower at varying heights because I knew she wasn't going anywhere near them anytime soon. Now that she's 1.5 I have wrapped them around the wreath to tuck them even higher up so that she can't reach them to pull them down. But you can hang them down lower at first as this adds a more whimsical look to the mobile. (Picture below is when I had them hanging further down.)
Hanging the mobile was actually pretty easy. Center the C hook in the middle of the crib, or wherever you want it, and make sure its screwed very tightly into the ceiling. You don't need an overly large C-hook as the mobile shouldn't be that heavy, but if it makes you feel better you can get as big of one as you'd like.
Then take the thin ribbon and measure three pieces exactly the same length. You will be looping these around the wreath ring so make sure that when you fold them in half, wherever they fall is how low you want the wreath to sit. Loop each piece around the wreath and bring the ends together to meet at the hook. You can tie each piece to the C-Hook, and again make sure to double knot around the hook. I think I honestly tied the ends like 15 times to make sure nothing was going anywhere, but just knot everything until you know it's secure. And there you have it!
