Pottery Barn inspired Mobile

The above is my version, which was inspired by The Pottery Barn "Primary Regatta Mobile"

also found at :  Primary Regatta Mobile

I discovered the Pottery Barn mobile a few months ago, and was actually going to order it.  At $39, I thought it was a pretty fair price, but I ended up putting it off for some reason.  

The more I thought about it, the more I thought, "Hey, I could make that."  I figured I could buy a bamboo stake from the garden section of Home Depot, find some little wooden sailboats from Hobby Lobby, and paint them up myself.  I could even make the sails with a little cotton duck and some wooden dowels.  I was originally going to make an exact copy of the mobile, where one would assume it came from PB.

I still put if off, while wrapping up other projects, and then when I came back to it, I decided to go REALLY frugal.  This is where my own interpretation came into play. 

I ended up chopping off a big branch from this tree in our back yard.

Okay, well ... I started to cut it off and I was unable to, so I made my husband do it for me.  Enter in: Confused husband wondering why he is chopping down a tree limb for his wife.

I took the branch from this:

to this:

by removing the foliage.   I then trimmed it down a bit more, and then painted it red with leftover paint from a paint job in our little boys' bedroom.

While waiting for the paint to dry on the main stick, I started construction on the sailboats.

I used the sticks that I trimmed off of the main branch with twine to hold them together.  I probably should have used some sort of glue, but I didn't have any on hand, and I wanted to make this a completely free project. 

The first step was to attach two sticks together like so:

I then attached a more 'green' and flexible branch like this:

Don't you dig the pre-k scissors I'm working with up there?  haha.

And finally, this:

Once my main 'frame' was complete, I just cut the shape of the sails I wanted from left over cotton duck.  Since I didn't have anything other than Elmer's glue on hand (not the quickest drying glue out there), I just did some quick stitches to put the sails together.

I did this process 4 more times until I was left with 5 sailboats of various sizes. 

The next day I attached the red branch to the ceiling, right above the baby's crib and the chair in the "Nursery Nook"

I then laid out the sailboats to figure out the arrangement I thought looked best.

A normal person would probably use fishing line at this point to attach the boats to the stick, but I just used plain white thread because I had it on hand.

I simply tied each boat onto the stick and was done!

Total cost:  Nada!  Zero!  Zilch!

Linking up to:

Tomorrow!  Check it out in the AM for other Pottery Barn inspired projects.

Thanks for stopping by and for any comments!

Oh, and today was my oldest baby's first day of school. :( from me, but lots of :) from him. 

Have a great day!