How to Make a Kite Mobile for a Nursery or Child's Bedroom

Colorful mobiles are eye candy, and even as a fully-grown adult, I’m drawn to their movement and design. One of the best reasons for making your own is that you can coordinate and match the colors and theme of the room. Plus, making them out of paper will mean they're lightweight, easy to hang and level. High-flying kites were the inspiration for this project; running around the park on a Saturday afternoon is one of our favorite family pastimes. Plus, kites are also a simple shape to re-create. When the ceiling fan is on this summer, my son is sure to enjoy watching these paper details fly.

Wrap Hoop

The hoop from which your kite mobile will hang doesn’t need to be wrapped in yarn, but mine was. You could also choose to stain, paint or leave it au naturel, but the fluffy white yarn feels reminiscent of a cloudy sky.

String for Hanging Hoop

To the wrapped hoop, tie three 5' pieces of yarn. Those pieces will be gathered and knotted so the hoop hangs easily. It’s always easier to assemble a mobile while it’s dangling. If you’re struggling to find a place to hang your mobile while you assemble it, consider putting a temporary hook (like a Command hook) on the ceiling.

Hoop to Kite Connection

Next, trim 12” lengths of the transparent thread, and tie them to the embroidery hoop. The yarn easily disguises the thread and the knot (it was even a bit challenging to photograph). Attaching the transparent thread to the hoop will give an illusion that the kites are floating!

Kite String

To the trailing end of each piece of transparent thread, connect a 3’ piece of yarn. Now, you’ll have a hoop with pieces of dangling transparent thread attached to lengths of yarn. I had seven dangling strings to hold seven individual kites.

Make Kites

Time to make the kites. For uniform diamond-shaped kites, use a ruler and a pencil to make an “X” connecting opposite corners on a standard sheet of construction paper. Then rely on the width of the ruler itself to make additional parallel lines on the paper.

To assemble seven kites, use scissors (or a guillotine trimmer) to cut two sizes:

• 28 small diamonds (individual diamonds as sketched on the paper)
• 14 large kites (a grid of four diamonds bunched together)

Use a glue stick to attach two contrasting small diamonds to each larger diamond kite. When assembling to the mobile, you’ll be pairing kites together, sandwiching them back to back, with the yarn, thread, and hot glue stuck in between.

Attach Kites to Strings

Use hot glue to attach the kites to the hanging strings. Position the kite so it overlaps (and hides) the knot where the transparent thread meets the yarn.

Kite Tails

Next, trim small pieces of paper (roughly 1/4” x 1”) and use glue to add kite string details to the trailing lengths of yarn. Just like with the kite diamonds, you can sandwich two pieces of paper with glue around the trailing yarn.

When you hang the mobile in your child’s room, use scissors to trim the ends to be slightly more even. Remember to keep it at a height where a child standing in a crib isn’t going to be able to pull them! You can either trim the kite tails shorter and raise the embroidery hoop higher to the ceiling.

Pro tip: If the kinks in the yard don’t straighten on their own, you can use a hair straightener on a low heat setting to correct it.

Level it out, step back, and adore!