For my final project I decided to create a mobile for my friend who is having baby at the end of January. We have known each other since second grade so when I heard she was pregnant I was surprised to say the least. She is also ten months younger than me so it is was weird for me to think that she is going to have a child. At first I was really against her having a baby, but I finally came around and realized that it is happening. It took me several months to process and be excited about her having a child. I though that making a mobile would be a great way to welcome the new baby into this world. It is a great way for me to display my love for her.
I decided to do one with Winnie the Pooh themed because that is going to be the theme of the nursery. I first started out looking for different patterns for characters that I could use for the mobile. At first I was looking for tutorials that did not use glue or scissors, but quickly realized that was an unrealistic expectation that I had put on myself.
I decided to go with a mixture of origami and pseudo origami. The origami folding is a lot more challenging and 3-D. While the pseudo origami is easier to dictate the actual characters. The challenging part of the pseudo origami was they were only one sided so that I ended up making two one for the front side and one for the back. The difficult part of this was that the copies had to be identical so that you couldn’t see the overlap on either side.
The Kangaroos are a great example of origami. Each one is made out of one piece of paper and do not require scissors or glue to create. Each kangaroo took about 20 minutes, but I usually do a test one to learn the pattern because the first one doesn’t turn out correctly. The object I ended up gluing together because the pieces came apart fairly easily. This object takes 30 pieces which I ended up using sticky notes for.
I also picked out a few quotes from Winnie the Pooh that I thought would be good words of wisdom for Benjamin(the baby) even though he will not be able to read them.
The most tedious part of the project though is getting the mobile to balance. I ended up using some of my dad’s fishing weights to get it to balance properly because one of the sides was a lot lighter then the other. Which is why each branch has its own origami cube to hold the weights so that it all balances.
I talked to my friend about making the mobile, but I haven’t told her that it is finished. I am really excited to drop the mobile off at her apartment and surprise her. I am really looking forward to being able to bless her with this mobile for the nursery.
