Mobile - A Sky Full of Stars

As I was browsing Pinterest back in the Spring for nursery ideas, I came across a pin of a mobile made from a bicycle wheel and paper airplanes. I loved the idea. But where to get a bicycle wheel? I finally found one I liked through eBay - and the 20" size was perfect for a mobile.

Then I put my engineer husband to the task of figuring out the best way to hang it. This is where the power of the Weatherwaxes come into play - "Weatherwaxes create!" (Makes me think of "Thundercats roar!" - hopefully some of you know what I am talking about.) My darling hubby, his mad CAD skills, and his CNC milling machine created a beautiful connector / bracket that pinned into the wheel and then into the wire cable. He even made sure that he could fit a wrench into the connector to tighten down the nuts. (Not sure I would have thought about that in the design process. I would have been more concerned about the aesthetics. We have lots more creative projects brainstormed, and I can't wait to share them - but they are Christmas presents so.... Turns out we make a pretty good creative production team.)


I thought the paper airplanes looked cool, but I wasn't sure if that's what I wanted to hang from the mobile. So with more browsing, I came across all kinds of origami and folded paper ideas. Then Coldplay came out with their new album Ghost Stories, and I saw the Target commercial with "A Sky Full of Stars," and decided I wanted to use stars, but I wanted them three dimensional and all of the origami versions I found were flat. That's when I turned to using papier-mâché forms and decoupage. 


My original idea was to use sheet music, and after much back and forth and consideration of other papers (leftovers form the Alphabet series, book pages, etc.) I stuck with the sheet music. I found a cheap-ish book of Jazz sheet music at the local Half Price Books and started tearing it up. I used the same PVA glue from the Alphabet series to collage the pieces of sheet music onto the stars and the sphere. The final decision was whether or not to add any color to the stars and moon, but they look so great just the way they are that I decided to leave them black and white.