Christmas leftovers! When we make salt dough ornaments, we make A LOT. Instead of packing up tons of new ornaments for next year or throwing them away, we made a sweet little mobile decoration. And we used materials we had lying around -- that you probably have right now too!
Materials
Salt dough ornaments
Hoop (or a stick or wire for a flat decoration)
Yarn
Embroidery floss or string
Beads
Paint (we used metallic nail polish)
Glitter, craft jewels, sequins, all the bling! (optional)
Modge Podge (to seal the salt dough after it's painted, optional)
Directions
This is a simple project that can be made with a hoop, stick or wire. We had six of the same angel, so a hoop made sense. If you have a bunch of different shapes, a stick or wire mobile for the wall might work better.
We tied the embroidery floss to our painted ornament and strung the beads in a pattern (great activity for little ones learning patterns).
Once the beading is complete, cut the yarn to hang your mobile. For the hoop decoration, I wanted to make six braids to go between our six angels. I wrapped rainbow yarn around a large piece of cardboard 18 times. Then I taped the yarn along one end of the cardboard and cut the opposite end with scissors. I didn't get a photo of this, but you can see more detail here, where I make doll hair using this method.
Folded in half and tied in a loop, I have 36 strands of yarn to braid into six braids (six strands to each braid). Don't worry about the yarn being the exact same length, as you can trim it once the mobile is assembled.
Once I did the braids, I attempted to tie them with single knots evenly. My son was kind enough to hold the yarn in position while I did this! This was the first stage, though, as it wasn't totally even yet.
I made small adjustments to the knots on the braids while it hung on this lamp. I also attached our crescent moon to a gold thread and tied it to the loop of yarn at the top. Then I knotted the bottom of each braid and trimmed the yarn evenly.
Fancy, right? We love this one.