From www.notmartha.org

Christmas tree ornament mobile, how-to

Here is how I made my Christmas tree ornament mobile, it was easier than it looks, promise.

The Supplies

• a 17" steamer rack from a restaurant supply store
• about 5 feet of lightweight jack chain
• a small carabiner
• 100 basic ornament hooks
• one roll, 500 feet, monofilament jewelry string (not the stretchy sort)
• 200 jewelry crimp beads or tubes
• jewelry crimping tool
• 100 lanyard hooks
• 100 ornaments

Note: In the photo above I show earring wire instead of ornament hooks. I changed that later as I found ornament hooks made it far easier to move ornaments around after they'd been hung. Also, my supplies are based on a 4 foot tall mobile using almost 100 ornaments, you'll need to adjust amounts if you make one larger or smaller.

Creating the Mobile Frame

Creating the frame for my ornament tree mobile turned out to be fairly simple. I used a lot of hooks to allow for easy adjustment and additions as the mobile was being assembled. I gathered materials from a restaurant supply store, a hardware store and the jewelry section of a craft store.

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· comments [84] · 12-21-2010 · categories:christmas · craft ·

Christmas tree ornament mobile

This year we decided to do something a little different with our tree and I created this Christmas tree mobile consisting of ornaments suspended on clear threads.
When I was shopping for ornaments to use found a lot on sale and went a little crazy. I decided it would be worth it to see how three different options would look. I did a variety of silver ornaments that came as a boxed set, green ornaments with three different textures and three sizes of clear glass ornaments that look a bit like bubbles.

Here is the mobile in context of our dining room (please forgive the mid-present wrapping clutter). We have room to put presents below it, and are still able to peek out the windows to see if the neighbor's cat is visiting our front porch.

The view from below.

The ornaments are hung on regular ornament hooks attached to jewelry monofilament secured with crimp beads. I'll put up details of how the mobile was created tomorrow. Instructions on how I made it are right over here.