BENGALURU: One of the trends that has made me gape in awe is the sheer magnitude of products for babies these days. As a new mom wanting to give my baby the best, I am obviously tempted to buy more for my bundle of joy.
But let’s not forget that for every plastic toy we collect in the name of a child’s learning and play, we add that much more to the earth’s toxin burden. Nursery mobiles are a fad with parents. From colourful to sophisticated, they are a must for any nursery with a baby and crib.
For a change, I decided to make my own nursery mobile.
Materials:scissors, duct tape, embroidery skein of the same colour as the wrapping paper, needle, white thread, cloth flowers of accented shades, patterned paper, sequins, craft glue, cardboard and soda can.
Method
■ Begin by wrapping the cardboard roll with plarn. You can try wrapping it with satin ribbon or some patterned paper. If you plan to glue up decorative paper though, make sure you have sufficient glue for it.
■ Let its end stay for a while, lest you would need it later. Now use the embroidery skein. A white or jute twine could be your alternates here.
■ Start off by leaving some thread, about half a feet, and fixing sequins on it. To fix sequins, I picked up a pair, squeezed glue on to one of them, placed the thread over it to run through its center, and stuck on it another sequin of the same shape and size.
■ Use craft punches to cut out circles and flowers from the patterned paper. Leave space of a few inches on the thread, and glue together another pair of circles from the patterned paper, and some flower shaped punched pieces from magazine recycle.
■ Tie the thread on to the cardboard ring. Try leaving irregular spaces, and do not stick to the same length each time you cut a piece of the embroidery skein. You can fix about five such pieces on to the roll. Add some pieces of ribbon and maybe knot it up on the ring to hang down alongside the threads.
■ Use long pieces of ribbon to tie through the roll for a handle on top of the mobile, and inserted the bunch of four lines of the ribbon into the soda can pull tab for buckling up. Your nursery mobile is ready.