Take that Martha Stewart!

So I've done some more crafting. This baby has got everyone in a very DIY mood. My latest project was a mobile for his crib. I had on picked out that would match his bedding but it was $45! And I'm rather thrifty (cheep) so I wasn't about to pay that! We have a mobile from when Sammy was a baby but the colors just didn't go... But I tout if I made my own hanginng characters then I could reuse his old mobile. So this is what I did...

I picked out my characters. I chose to stick with a blue and brown color theme and I picked out wild animals to make. A giraffe, lion, elephant, and a turtle. Using Google images I googled "Giraffe outline" or "giraffe outline template." I did this with all the animals. The hardest part was getting them to be all about the same size. I printed out each template then cut them out.

i cut out the shapes out of felt. Then using the opposite color felt I cut out things like spots and eyes and ears. I used fabric glue to attach everything but to tell you the truth it didn't work at all. Which is why I hand stitched around the edges. A hot glue gun would work MUCH better. And when I find mine I am going to go back and make sure all the spots, ears and eyes and such are secure.

I stuffed them all with this filler that you can get at Walmart but this was WAY more than I needed. I would recommend cotton balls (our Walmart was out, COMPLETELY out of cotton balls) because it's cheaper and less waste. I may have to make something else just so I can use up this filler... A pillow maybe?

 And I picked this cute inexpensive (47 cents) ribbon to attach each character to the mobile. In light blue, of course, to match. I have a lot of it left too!

Like I said before the fabric glue didn't work well with the felt so I hand stitched the edges (which turned out really cute). Stuffed with the filler and hung on the mobile. I only spent $6.50 because I already had thread and fabric glue (and hot glue when I find it). Way better, I think, than $45.

I bought 6 pieces (8x10) of felt- 3 of each color (i ended up with one untouched sheet of each color left over)= 27cents each
Ribbon= 47cents
Filler= $3.50 ish

My brother-in-law made wooden letters for the wall to spell out Jacob's name. And his wife painted them light blue with brown polka dots!