By rachelbean's request-- http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 30#p933913
I thought I'd post a little how-to on how I made a mobile for my baby nursery.
A few weekends ago, I hid out with my husband at his office, so he could get ahead on some of his projects, and I could soak up some blessed AC. I decided to while away the time at a conference table, building armatures for animals for a mobile.
Since I already have a bit of an African animal theme going on in the nursery, I thought I'd stick with charismatic megafauna of the Serengeti. I knew I wanted an elephant, a giraffe, and a zebra-- the latter two for their patterns, and the elephant because, well, I love elephants. I figured five animals total, and after a bit of deliberation, chose a lion as my big cat (a leopard came in close second-- but I thought his spots might read a little too similar to the giraffe's patterns.)
I decided my fifth animal should be a bird. Unfortunately, I don't know African birds that well, so I hopped on an office computer and did a little on-line research. I discovered secretary birds-- large, with striking black and white feathers, a raptor-ish beak, and a red eye spot. Perfect! (After I found all sorts of pictures of secretary birds, I thought I remembered a secretary bird character from The Lion King. I'll have to check and see if I'm right about that.)
I'd already decided to build the animals out of papier-mache, because it's cheap, versatile, and lightweight (I didn't want to hang anything heavy over the baby.) Plus, I'm just a big fan of papier-mache. There's something about crumpling and tearing up paper, and then smoothing it in place with warm, sticky goo, that's very relaxing.
Actually, back in the day, I used to joke that if I ever really lost it, I wanted to do papier-mache as my occupational therapy. Of course, when you actually do lose it, you find out you don't get to choose your occupational therapy activities. We ended up making greeting cards, and other crap out of construction paper. A shame.
Anyway, I built the basic shapes of the animals out of lumps of paper wadded up and twisted and controlled with bindings of masking tape. For the giraffe and the zebra, I stole a little foam core from my honey's office (a perk of hanging out in an architecture studio)-- made a base for the torsos and necks, and legs and heads that slotted into place, then built them up as necessary with crumpled paper.
For the secretary bird's wings, I used some scrap watercolor paper-- cut darts to give the wings a little curve, and taped them in place.
The next stage of construction involved wrapping the armatures in paper and paste. Since that tends to be messy, I did that step at home. I have a dry container full of wallpaper wheat paste, which I've been using for papier-mache projects for probably about ten years now-- it doesn't take much to make a nice big bowl full of goo. You can use regular wheat flour for this step, though.
I also like to add a bit of white glue to the mix to make it extra sticky and a little smoother and stronger. SOBO glue is really good for this, but I decided I'd just add a bit of Elmer's, since I had a bunch kicking around.
First I wrapped all the armatures in strips of gooey newsprint (I grabbed a New York Post from the recycling bin upstairs-- only thing that rag is good for!) I let that coat dry. I used broken toothpicks to build out the elephant's tusks, and the secretary bird's legs and tail. Then, where I needed to, I built up the shapes with wadded up pasty newsprint, and did a second wrap.
After that dried, I trimmed away excess paper as needed, and applied two coats of gesso to each animal-- both to seal and strengthen the sculpture, and to create a nice base for painting.
I used acrylic paint, because it covers well, dries fast, and isn't fume-y (after all, I'm still cooking another person-- even if he's almost done.)
It took me a while to figure out what I should use as a mobile frame-- wire? Wood?
Then I remembered I'd bought Fiona a cat toy that was essentially a clump of feathers on a string, which dangled from a length of carbon-fiber rod. She didn't seem to be that into playing with it, so I decided I'd save the feathers for her, and harvest the rod for the mobile. It's actually pretty perfect for the purpose, since it's strong, light, evenly-weighted, and has a bit of flex.
Unfortunately, I think Fee was a little sad about losing her toy after all:
I have a few spools of nylon beading string in my stash, which I used to suspend the critters. I made wire hanging loops out of heavy-duty paper clips (a set of barrel-nose pliers is handy for this), which had a tail of wire I glued into the back of each animal.
I didn't have any crimping beads for the nylon, so I just knotted it a bunch of times and then glued the knots with non-toxic craft glue.
There was a lot of back-and-forth in these steps, where I'd test-suspend the animals and the frame pieces, checking for balance points, making sure everything would hang evenly, eyeballing heights and lengths of cord.
I ended up working one-handed a lot.
I decided to finish the cut ends of the fiber rod with a little leather lace, wrapped and glued and knotted with a fringe. Towards the end, I drafted J to suspend the frame for me, so I could use both hands for the last few finishing touches.
He hung it in place for me, too.
That is so fantastic, and it's wonderful to see something different AND handmade! 
