My toddler loves collecting sticks (and rocks, and flowers, and acorns, and pinecones, and dirt clods, and...) when we are out for a hike. After this weekend's trek in the woods, I hung on to those sticks since I knew rain was on the way. Sure enough, we spent the next day indoors transforming those sticks into a little art! You might not be Alexander Calder, but once this is up and spinning you will feel like it belongs at MOMA.
What you'll need:
Sticks
Scissors
Glue
First, go on a stick hunt! Collect sticks of various widths and lengths. Avoid sticks with flaky bark or that are damp and crumbly. If you are in a place where ticks or other creepy crawlies are a problem, leave your sticks out on the porch in the sun for an hour or so to make sure they come indoors bug free.
Now, time to wrap! Pick a floss color and tie a double knot around a stick. Wrap it up! you can tuck the tail of your knot under your wapping if you want to be fancy, or just snip it off later.
You can be a careful wrapper and lay down the floss in a nice smooth manner, or a sloppy wrapper and just go to town. They both wind up looking nice, so it's more a matter of your preference and you and your participants dexterity. When you are finished with that color leave the last loop around the stick loose, then wind the end of the floss through that loop a few times and then pull tight and snip off the tail.
Side note: My 2 year old enjoyed watching this project and the end result, but didn't quite have the dexterity to do much wrapping himself. My husband on the other hand (maybe it was the rain?), was surprisingly and delightfully eager to jump in and give this a go.
Alright, so now it's time to get creative! There is no right or wrong way to do this. Put colors next to each other, on top of each other, or do what my husband did and wrap a couple of colors at the same time to give it a striped look. You can do big blocks of color, little blocks of color, wrap the whole stick or just a small part of it. You honestly just can't go wrong.
Are your sticks wrapped? Aren't they just so cheerful?! Lay them out on a table to give yourself an idea of how you would like your mobile to look. I went with wider/bigger sticks up high going down to smaller skinny sticks, but I imagine you could mix up sizes if you wanted. It's your rodeo.
For your top stick, tie floss to each end, creating a triangle with the top being where you hang your mobile. The next bit is all a balancing act. So you will want to loosely tie a knot around a stick and then attach the next stick... again loosely. This will allow you to slide the knot/sticks around to get a good balance later.
Once you have everything arranged and balanced out, add a dollop of glue on top of your knots to glue them to your stick so they don't slide around anymore and let it dry.
Now you have a bright, cheerful, nature inspired craft to hang around the house and torment your cat... I mean... enjoy!
Let me see how yours turns out! Post pictures below or tag @thismommakes on instagram.
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