Crafty Night Owls: IKEA Project #5 - Circus Themed Mobile

IKEA Project #5 - Circus Mobile

I am super excited about this one.

Below is a picture of what it looked like when I bought it from IKEA. This is a white drying rack found in there laundry section. check it out HERE

Supplies:

IKEA drying racks (white, red or black)
Tissue Paper
Modge Podge
Brush
Wire
Fabric Strips
Ribbon
Scrapbook Paper
Glue Gun & Glue
Pony Beads

The first thing I decided to do to this was add some color to the legs, these legs have an indent area on both sides. I picked out some blue tissue paper, grabbed my modge podge and brush and was ready to rock and roll. To apply the tissue paper, I first spread a little modge podge in the indentation and took a torn piece of tissue paper, pressed the tissue paper onto the modge podge and then took more modge podge and brushed it onto of the paper also, then if there was tissue paper on the sides I would just brush them towards the middle and seal them down. I also covered the bottom round base with tissue paper also using the same technique.

Once I had the legs finished, I had to decide what theme I wanted. I came across some fantastic scrapbook paper of circus animals and all things circus in the "All About Boys Stack".

To make the Streamers:

Cut out the different designs from the scrapbook pages, organize them a bit on your table so you have a clear idea of how they should be glued onto each ribbon. Take a 10-12" ribbon and glue one design on one side of the ribbon, then turn over and glue the other design on the backside (these need to be the same size). Continue to work down the ribbon (I put 3 sets of designs on each ribbon). you will need 16 strands of ribbons for this part and 96 designs. Once your finished with a strand you can clip it to the mobile using one of the hanging clips.

To make the Big Top:

Take wire and make 2 circles. The first one measuring 2" across and the second one 15" across. I made the circles by taking my wire making a complete circle then going around the entire circle by wrapping more wire around. These are not solid circles, they are still going to bend (that is ok for this project). Now I grabbed red & white fabric. Each strip will me 9" long, you will cut strips at an angle as shown in the below photo (your strips need to be skinnier at the top and wider at the bottom). You will need 16 strips of white and 16 strips of red. Tie each strip onto the smaller wire circle, alternating colors. Now glue the larger wire circle to the top of the 8 legs. To glue the wider ends of the fabric strips to the larger circle follow this order (white onto the wire above one of the legs, red, white, red on the bare wire in between the leg you just used and the following one, repeat until you complete the circle.) I personally did all my white strips first then my red ones. Once all the strips are glued, cut v's into the ends of the fabric that are dangling over the wire.