to the fullest...: DIY Geometric Mobile

2019 Update: Looking for nursery decor in a similar style? Check out my Etsy shop, Little Great Design Co.!

Today I've got an easy tutorial for a mobile I put together for Cameron to share with you!

When I was pregnant with James I searched the internet far and wide for baby mobiles and was pretty disappointed with what I found. There are tons of gaudy, plastic-y, and ugly (in my opinion) options for sale from Target and other baby retailers, and there are some much cuter and trendier handmade options from Etsy that generally cost more money than I was willing to drop on a mobile. So I decided to go DIY, purchased this mobile/photo display from Amazon and printed some pictures to hang from the clips.

More recently, I pinned this geometric mobile on my baby board and planned to swap out the pictures I used in my original mobile for something similar. While James' mobile looked cute in the room, it wasn't very visually stimulating from below, which is the point of baby mobiles, right?! Hence my idea to go 3D. I combined the geometric mobile inspiration with my own idea to use black and white patterned paper (since high contrast stuff is great for young babies) and ended up with a mobile both baby Cam and I really like.

Materials:
White paper (just regular printer paper works better for the folding, not card stock)
PDF's for black and white patterns (free printables available here, here, here, and here)
Scissors
Glue stick
Mobile/photo display hanger with clips (This is the one I have)
Geometric shape pattern printables (found here)

Step 1: Print black and white patterns onto white paper.

Step 2: Print geometric patterns onto the other side of the paper sheets that you just printed the black and white patterns on. I used the patterns for dodecahedron, octahedron, icosahedron, and tetrahedron.

Step 3: Cut on the solid lines of the geometric patterns. I used scissors because that's all I had, but an exacto knife and cutting mat would probably be faster and more precise.

Step 4: Fold on the dotted lines. I found that when I handled the black and white patterned side a lot, the black ink rubbed off on my fingertips and easily made smudges. So I tried to touch it as little as possible on that side, used a pen to make the fold creases, and kept a wet wipe handy to clean my fingers often to reduce the smudging.

Step 5: Apply glue to the folded tabs and assemble the 3D shape. I used a glue stick, but I'm sure other types of glue would work too.

Step 6: Attach your finished 3D shapes to the mobile clips, and hang your finished product above baby's bassinet, crib, or changing table. The whole thing only took me a couple hours to put together (with plenty of interruptions from big brother) and voila- I had an easy, affordable, modern, aesthetically pleasing, developmentally appropriate, and visually stimulating baby mobile!