Thursday, April 9, 2009

A Fluttering Fairy Mobile!


What does one do with a house full of fairies? Set them to tending the flowers and butterflies, of course!

This (temporary) art installation/chandelier is a grouping of five mobiles hanging off our dining room light, that my daughter and her friends assembled during the birthday party. And I came up with this craft all on my own-some! :-) It started simply with finding some pre-cut butterfly and flower foam shapes on clearance. Add some stickers, yarn from the stash, and you're pretty much done.

The clever bit was how I mangled the coat hangers to become the 3D foundation for these mobiles-in-the-round. To duplicate: pull the bottom bar of the hanger up toward the top and get them as close together/parallel as possible; curve the two "arms" around toward each other, creating an arc shape that can be as tight or open as you like; to set, flip the bottom bar OVER the hook so there is now a twist of the hanger wire within each arm. This keeps the shape from falling out, especially if you were using heavier objects in your mobile. (For the foam it probably didn't matter, but I liked the twist effect.) I then wrapped the hanger in a bit of blue tulle to evoke a "sky" feeling. Ta-da!!

The girls enjoyed it. The moms were not overly burdened with clunky, heavy things to lug home. Win-win all round. Hooray!