Transcripts
1. Introduction: Brass mobile create a beautiful addition to any decor. They are elegant and their slim profile match with their beautiful golden tones, ignites the play within us while maintaining the sophistication of modern design. I began experimenting with different ways that I could balance really beautiful brass elements when I wanted to give unique gifts that I created by hand one year and they were such a joy to create that I had to bring this project to all of you as well. I'm Peggy Dean. I am an artist, an author, an educator, and founder of the Pigeon Letters. A resource haven for artists looking to grow their creative passion. I'm so excited to bring you the unexpected DIY that will add a touch of beauty to your own home or to give as a gift. This class is perfect for anybody that's looking to add a bit of understated minimal design in the form of suspended shine. You might be a crafter, you might be an artist, but you might be an accountant, you don't have to have any previous experience working with metals. You only need the supplies that I will be mentioning and covering right away in the class so you can grab them. I've also linked them in the About this class, so you can snag them quickly and dive right in. I recommend watching the class one time through though as you wait for your supplies and then return to the class for a refresher as you actually start building your very own beautiful mobile. Let's jump in and see what all this is about.
2. Materials Needed: Well, I love to always promote working with what you have, unfortunately, this is a craft that you do have to have supplies for. But don't worry, this is something that I'm going to help you with and everything's going to be linked for you. Then you can just grab this habit in a couple of days and continue on with me. Oftentimes, it's helpful to watch projects like this one time through and then come back and watch them again as you actually approach doing the project. Some of this stuff is optional and I'm going to go over what's absolutely necessary first and then I'll tell you what's optional. I'm going to start off with the first thing that we need, which are brass sheets. I get my brush sheets in the size of six by 12. They come like this so they're really protected. This is what they look like on the inside. Obviously I've used this one, but I use 30 gauge. You can use lighter brass and this one, it's just a little bit tougher, well, there are a lot lighter versions which actually work a lot better for mobiles usually. For some reason I'm just more drawn to the 30 gauge because it's more heavy duty, but I'll link that for you and then your wire. You're going to want 16 gauge wire. The reason for that is because you want it to be nice and thick. If you get even 18 gauge wire, I think I have some. I do and I'll show you what that looks like. So 18 gauge, I'm going to show you the difference. It's much flimsy and you're going to want something that is a lot stiffer because this is going to be supporting all of your mobile elements. So 18 gauge wire, again, this is linked for you so you can grab some. You can also grab this at your local craft store. Usually, they're in the jewelry making section. Then you will want some needle nose pliers. Some of these rounded nose they're usually for jewelry bead making stuff like that, so you'll be able to find them. This isn't something you usually have in your household, where those needle nose pliers usually are. You can use needle nose pliers, but you'll see why as we get into the course why I think you will be much happier getting the round nose. Because the connection should be nice and smooth and you'll know what I mean in a bit. But I do recommend both of these sets. Then you'll need some scissors. If you have shorter scissors, that would be even more ideal because you'll have more control as you're cutting, but any scissors are fine. A pencil, I don't have that sitting right here next to me, but you do want a pencil and then you need a brass cutter that has the hole punch in it. So everything from here on is optional. Again, I have a print out for you guys, so you know what you do need and then the optional stuff. These are brass tubes and this is if you want your mobiles to have straight connections, then dangle from each side, which is just an aesthetic choice, you don't need them. We actually won't be using these in this class, but I wanted to show you so that I could plant some ideas that might be also fun for your particular style anesthetic. Then I've got some skinnier wire. This is 22 gauge and I just use this for the very top of my mobile so that it has something to hang from that isn't so thick. Then I also have these little connectors that are used for, usually for jewelry connection where you just open them up and send them back together. This kit is super cheap. But I do this so that I can connect to multiple elements and the mobile together so that there's added elements like hanging together. You can get gold. I had silver on hand, so I wasn't about to go and buy more when I just didn't need it. It's also once everything's built and put together, very, very you don't notice the difference of color because it's not something you're paying attention to. They're so small, you'll see what I mean. Again, this is something that will be later on optional. Then lastly, a cleaning cloth. You can use any soft material, even a shirt. This is so you'll notice that as we work here, the oils from your hands are going to smudge this up quite a bit, and so these cleaning clothes will just clean it up at the end. Another optional thing, usually, if you have eye glasses or sunglasses or something, you can use that cloth. That's what we're going to need. Again, the resources are all linked for you below so that you can grab these really quickly and without further ado, let's actually dive into creating this thing.
3. Draw Your Shapes: Now, we're going to actually start creating our shapes and planning out what we want them to be. Now, if you are somebody who likes to really plan, then you could do some sketches of what you want your mobile to look like. I'm the opposite; I actually like to create my shapes and then see how they can build up together to create something really cool. I'm less of a planner, but either way is the right way. There's no wrong way. When you cut your package open, this is what you will find, a beautiful brass sheet, and you only need one of these. You don't need to buy a whole bunch to make one mobile. In fact, you could probably even get away with using one of these for two, if you are careful about your space. I always like incorporating circles and half circles. To do that, obviously I need to figure out how to make a perfect circle in my design and I use what I have on hand, which is why I have these random objects next to me. I have this smaller circle as a reference. That's just a tealight candle, and then I've got this pot. I'm going to take my plant out of it, and I'm going to put it upside down and use this part. It's got dirt in it and everything, so we're doing this together. You might have a candle this size, or a cup rim. This is just what was right here as I'm filming this, because I want you to know that I really do just reach for what I have and you can do the exact same thing and if it gets dirt on, you could just blow it off. What I do is, I get to the very edge. I do not want to waste any of this space, and then I take my pencil and I just trace lightly around that area. Then you can see I have a circle. I can get this dirt off. I'm telling you, work with what you have. I don't know if you see it very well but, let's see. There you go. I see it better than it's probably showing up, but I have this circle as a reference. Just for the sake of this actually, I will make these darker so that you can actually see what I'm doing. I usually don't do them very dark because I'm not great at cutting, and I want to make sure that it doesn't show up, but that's okay; and you can see I mess that up the second time. That's okay. I'm going to improvise, and if that happens to you, I'm just going to curve in a little more and nobody will ever know the difference. From here, if another one will fit right here, I'll use that, otherwise I will start forming different types of shapes. For example, right here, I could grab a flat surface. It could be a ruler, it could be the edge of a book, and then I can see the distance right here. I really want to utilize that entire space. Then I'll draw a thick line so you can see, and then another one right here. Then I can go diagonal with it, like this, to make triangles. I don't usually do the guide in the middle because I just know what I'm going to do but, see, that's just an example of how I can utilize that space. I don't really focus on whether or not my triangles are perfect when I draw them because I can always cut to adjust them, but that's also me as somebody who's not overly thinking it and maybe you like to plan out better, in which case, of course, take advantage of the space that you have. Right after I grab that plant, I saw this candle that was right next to me, which is smaller than that circle so I'm going to utilize this one also. If you like the rounded shapes, I suggest creating more circles than you think you need, because you can really take advantage of half circles. Here's one and then I'll add another one and see I'm getting real close. I want to make sure that I am utilizing that space the best that I can. Sometimes if I do multiple circles, I'll go into that open space in between these two and just really push it up there, and then I'm going to do some smaller ones. You'll see what I mean, like I'm going in between those two areas to utilize that space, and I just build up as I go. I also like that example that I showed you, this longer skinny with the bands and I'll show you how to do all that, but I like stuff like that too. I usually, let's say this was a little bit thicker because the circle is smaller. I'd usually take advantage of areas like that. I just think about that as I go along. But, now what I want to do is actually take half of this candle and do the top part here. But then leave the bottom, and I'm actually going to take that straight edge. Rulers are probably your best bet here, but straight edge and I'm going to draw a line all the way down or most of the way down and then do the same thing on the other side, where I'm creating this long curved shape that is straight at the bottom. Some people really like to take advantage of more abstract shapes. You don't even have to have a guide for that. You can go in and draw something that has more of an imperfect shape, and that's how you can really take advantage of all of these and all of this space. I'm going to do a couple of those, and then maybe smooth that out right here. Then right here I could do something where I take the edge of this candle and create a guide that will be like a curve, so it cuts out in this shape. Then I can also narrow that out. Basically, you're just playing with shapes. Then here, this is that space that I was talking about that would be useful for something like this. So just because you have all these shapes in place doesn't mean you can't take advantage of the smaller areas as well. I'm going to take that flat edge and go as long as I can, and then I can curve. You can use a guide or you can eyeball it. I usually, again, I'm the type of person who just eyeballs it, and then I cut to adjust later. Then I'm going to cut this whole thing. I might end up splitting it in half. We'll see how this builds together. I might even end up splitting these. This is just to lay everything out. Then I am now going to cut everything.
4. Brass Cutting: When you get into cutting this, I recommend starting on one side and going the rest of the way, and the reason why is because you're going to have a lot of sharp edges here and you want to avoid cutting yourself. I'll start on one side and I cut just inside of my pencil lines so that they don't show up and I want to make sure that I'm constantly moving so that I don't create edges that are really abrupt. I want them to be nice and smooth and then if something like this happens, see this is curling up and that's pretty sharp, what I usually do is I just cut that off. Be careful because that's still a sharp edge, but I just want this to be out of the way because it was curling down and I don't want to cut myself. Continuing on here and I'm just moving the whole time and I know that I have this area up here that I have to work and do, so I'm cutting much lower now than my pencil line and just going along the edge. See how I made that work anyway. You're going for a perfect circle. I would just redraw one on the inside, just smaller. I don't really go for perfection, I just go for that finished look. To me, that's a great circle. I'm happy with it. I wouldn't change necessarily much. I might turn this edge if I cared that much so that it was just more proportionate as a perfect circle, but I'm happy with it, so I'm not going to actually. I'll move these out of the way. You'll see this real sharp area, I'm going to cut that off and then move it also over to that area of my discard. You might want to have an area that you put all of these ends so that they don't fly away because if you find a stray piece of brass or if your dog finds a stray piece of brass, it will not be a good day for anybody. I'm just going to point out this area here, I don't know if you see it as well as I do but I created this sharp edge because I wasn't moving while cutting. But when I say moving, I mean curving my scissors. I had an abrupt stop, so I'm not going to fix that or trim it until I have this entire shape cut out and that's just so that I have more control without the threat of those sharp edges. This one is not as perfect. You can see I've got this sharp edge, I've got this sharp edge and so I am going to cut that off and this is where you're starting to form little brass slivers and they're super small, so make sure those are out of the way. Then just make sure the rest of it looks nice and smooth and then you can set that to the side because that one's done. I'll cut this part off, maybe from right here and then I'll cut this part off that's curling. Sometimes though it could be a lot larger of a piece and something you could utilize as a shape and you'll see that as you're cutting it because sometimes that step doesn't really appear to you until then, so I do recommend watching out for opportunities like that. Here's an example. I just went too fast and I cut myself on this corner, so just keep that in mind like this is possible to cut yourself so please be careful. I'm going to keep going here and then I'll cut this area off since it's ready and I'll just keep going real slow while curving my scissors and trying to keep that as smooth as possible. If you can get your cut right in the beginning, it will save you a lot of time later or a lot of issues later if you're having trouble getting something perfectly straight. Then just inside the pencil mark and then see how this isn't totally even. If it helps you guys to go back in and redraw your guide, I recommend doing it because a lot of times when we try to eyeball this type of stuff, it doesn't turn out how we want it to. Actually, that turned out okay, so I'm going to keep it. But it's not perfect and they don't have to be perfect, but if it's really wonky and you want it to be more symmetrical, then you can always take your guide and just redraw the top part, just come down slightly and then make that work. I wanted to tell you too, these shapes that we're doing, don't think that like, "Oh, this is the finished shape and it's like not what I love" because I'm going to show you techniques that you can do with these as we get further in. Right now, we just want to cut these guys out. That being said, I'm going to cut the rest of these and speed up my video so you guys don't have to watch this drooling long process but you can also see the progress I'm making and whatnot.
5. Add Texture: These are the pieces that I'm left with after I have cut everything out and put them out. I know I'm not going to use all of them, but I want to see what looks nice together. I know that I personally love semi-circles a lot, so I'm going to cut one of these in half, that's the first thing I'll do. If you're into measurements, you can always measure them out. I just like to eyeball them because that's just what I do. If something curls like this at the end, trying to get this straight with your fingers is not ideal, so I would just grab something that is hard and even and nice and heavy and just smooth it out. I got my semi-circles. I've got regular circles. I'm going to save some of these for later on. Then if you want to end up combining some of these elements together to have them hang and cascading, that'll be perfect. What I'll use for this one is, let's see, I think that I will actually also split this larger one up into semi circles. There's not a particular reason I'm doing these, It's mostly just intuition as I go along. I know that I like them, so this is what I would prefer to use. I'll probably use one of each of these maybe three, but I'll put these aside for now and then I will probably use one of these circles, I'm not sure which one. I like these abstract shapes, so keep those in here. I don't think I want triangles for this one, so I'm going to move those over and then I'm just going to use one of these, I think the smaller one works better with this style. Then this guy, I don't need it, I don't think, so I'll put that over here. See how this can make two mobiles. This is what I love about this project, is that it can be so creative. It takes you on a journey and lets you play the whole entire time, which I just think is so fun. Now what I'm going to show you are special techniques that you can do with these elements. The first one is really simple, I use a pencil, but you can use anything that's small and it's to create this crinkly wavy look and you can use this with semi-circles or circles, you can use it with any of these shapes really. I'm going to do it to this long shape and in my circle. What you need to do, it's really simple, I just go to the very edge and then I hold the bottom with my thumbs and then I just bend it and it's okay. I'm not even touching the surface because my thumbs are hung away, but that's okay, because I just bend it, don't go all the way and that's it. Then I turn it over and I hold my pencil to the bottom of my pencil to the top of the bend and then I just use my surface for it's leverage and then bend it the other way. Then you'll see, I've got two bends, don't worry about straightening it out yet. Then I'm going to do the same thing to the other side again, just fold it underneath and then I have this design. You can see that this is crawling on up, you can do it all the way up, you can do it just a little bit, just at the bottom. I'm going to do that same thing again, come in and bend up and then again. We're about a third of the way up and I could go higher, I don't like to stop in the middle, I like to keep them more like the end, like in thirds basically. I feel like this is pretty good and then I can just straighten it out, it's bent up so I just bend it back and this is what it looks like. You could do this more extreme actually. Your ends could be a lot more bent and that's when you would use the surface as even more leverage where you push it a little harder instead of just like a soft bend or you almost do bend all the way and use the surface to your advantage. But it just adds a little bit more sharpness to your bend, sharpness, good word. But I feel like that's good on this slide and I'm going to do the same to the circle here and I'm just going to the bottom of it, then they get like this and then switching sides, bottom of my pencil lines up with the top of the previous bend, going to the bottom, lining it up and then bending and then straightening that out. I think I'll go higher on this one, almost the whole way basically and then the top here. Make sure it's nice and lined up. It just looks a little more finished and you could do this to all or some, but there's another technique I want to show you that I super love and it's hammering. You can get a surface that's like [inaudible] and then you can just take an actual hammer or mallet, lay this on top of the surface and then use the hammer. I'll show you what that will look like, it's super quick, so we're going to take a little field trip. Welcome to my patio. You can see here what I'm doing is, I'm just setting down the brash sheet on top of the cement and hammering. It's light, it's heavy, whatever. But it just takes a few hits and then you have this awesome texture, look at this texture, it's delicious. I do this to both sides actually because the back you can see it's just indented, so I want that to my effect where it is showing the hammer on both sides and not just like one surface basically. So I just flip it over, hammer it a little more, make sure your fingers are out of the way and that's it. Then you can see this gorgeous texture that it creates, I'm obsessed. I want to really encourage you guys to get creative with how you create texture in these. The wavy lines or crinkles or whatever you want to call them are awesome. Hammering is my personal favorite, I just think that the organic texture is so fine. But then these like abstract shapes that are just flat, like they really bring their own interests to, so why take away from those really unique shapes? Get creative with how you want to bring texture or lack there of to your shapes and see what you can come up with. In the next segment we are going to start getting these prompt for a connection.
6. Metal Hole Punching: This is when you're going to need your metal or brass cutting hole punch, and I'm going to show you how this will work. Essentially, it's this really tiny bar that you're going to place your brass inside of and then twist until it punches a hole, and it makes it a lot easier than having to punch with your hand because that can get really hard on your hands and so I'm all about some ergonomics. Now, some of these will be straightforward; like this one, you'd obviously punch a hole at the top. If it helps you to mark the spot, totally do that. Keep in mind that you're going to put wire through it, so you might not want it super thin, but just know this stuff doesn't tear easily. So if you put it really, really and when I said thin, the section in between the top and the hole. But keep in mind it doesn't tear easily, so it doesn't matter that much. I'm just going to go just a smidge down probably the same width of the actual bar that's punching the hole, that's about the width of space that I'm leaving in between. I'm going to get that right where I want it and just tighten it enough to where it's in place and then I can double-check everything. That's not quite centered, I'm going to make it centered. This is where if you care a lot about this kind of thing, you could mark it. I'm an eyeballer, so you can do whatever you want. As I twist this, you're going to feel some tension, and then you're going to hear or feel like a pop; sometimes not. Looks like not this time but it did. I should have punched a hole. Sometimes they can be finicky, so just check. I also think I have, yeah, so we got a hole here. Untighten it now and then just pop it out and then you can see I've got my hole. I like to keep just a smidge of space and that's because I never know what I'm going to want to connect together with these connections so later on I might want to connect these two together, and it just adds that extra element, which is where those really come in handy. But for now, I'm not going to worry about that because let's work with what we have. I'm going to do this to all of mine now. This is where you can get creative; this one was straightforward of where you put the hole, but this one, I could put it here. I could put it here, I can make it so that it's horizontal or like off-balance. I think that might be fun. I'm just going to eyeball, make sure I have enough space, and then twist all the way and then untwist. Make sure I have that hole in there. Yeah. Okay. That is it on that one. Then this guy, same thing, I'm just going to try to be creative and how I want that hanging. I like this toward the bottom, I think that's fun, so I'm going to come in here, make sure I have enough space. I do. Twist, and then untwist. Hold on to that, and then pop it off. I got my hole. This one, straightforward, just any of the edges because it's a cylinder circle. All right, there we go. I got my hole. Then this one, I'm going to want it to be at the top, in the center. This is what I want to pay more attention to. I'm just going to position it. Make sure that's where I want it. It looks good to me. Then open it back up. Then semicircles, they look good hanging either direction. Nobody says you have to do them that way, you could do them from the side. But I like to do them either on the flat edge or the curved edge, and it often just goes with the vibe. For some reason, this is softer and then this is a little more edgy and mid-century, and that might just be in my head, but that's what I go off of. So I'm going to go with the top because I think I like anything that's edgier, personally. A lot of this is creative choice and personal preference, so run with that. Okay. There we go, and one more. You can even do two different, what's it called? Either way. You can have one face one direction and one face another direction, which I have done plenty of times. Okay. Once you have all of your holes, any brass that comes out of there just get it over in your brass pile so that you don't have slivers. Luckily, the circles aren't as bad. Okay. So from there, you've got all your hole cuts, and now let's start actually building the mobile the funnest part.
7. Position Your Elements: When I first started making these, the hardest part for me was keeping the wires straight. The tip that I have for you before you even get into anything, is to grab the end and just pull. Don't pull and keep pulling from the wire, just pull from the end. It might feel a little strange at first, but just have your grip be at the end, pull, and then you have that nice arc. See how I messed the end up. You're going to mess the whole thing up if you pull anywhere else. This is how I start to do all of the wire. Then you're going to want your wire cutters to break that off. I mean, I can eyeball it, but this is probably about a foot-longish, maybe a little bit more. It really doesn't matter. This is just the distance between where your mobile is hanging each element. You could do it a lot larger, you could do it smaller. You might have more length if you go longer. But a foot-ish is about a good place to start, so that's what I'm going to cut out here. Then this is the big part. Also about keeping and making sure that you have a good connection point. What you want to do is create a loop at the top here. See how I've got my round pliers. What I'm going to do actually is have the center here and hold, twist my hand upside down like this and hold onto this, and then take my other hand to form a good grip. I'm just going to spin this around like so and then let go. Then I'm just going to take both ends and stretch it out. Then you're going to create this little loop right here. I went a little too far so I'm going to show you that again. I'm grabbing the wire, spin and pulling it out until I have approximately a foot or so. Cut that off. Later fly across the desk and then don't over form it. Just take those round pliers hold in the center. My hand is upside down, and then I'm just going to flip it right side up like this. See how I didn't go as far that time. Now I can take both of the ends and stretch it to open up and then it's got that perfect connection at the top. That's what I'm going for. I'm going to do this a few times with this wire because I want to have all of these in place so I can plan out how I want this to hang, and look, and be balanced. Sometimes I'll count how many times or how many connections that I want but I could also just build this flat to see what I want it to look like. For example, I have the top of it, what's connected to the ceiling. Then I'll have two connections coming off of there, so right Right and then another over there. I can put this guy here. Actually, let's see here. Probably another connection over here and then another one even below that. I'm basically building as I'm creating my wire, or you can, of course, create all of your wire at the same time. I've actually done both and it just depends on what I'm feeling that day. Another note is while this is flat, your mobile is going to be in different positions. Just because it's flat like this doesn't mean it's going to look exactly like this. Just keep that in mind as you're planning. It's not always going to be like what you put next to each other is going to sit right next to each other or something. You could even take one of these away and have one of these guys hanging off of that one and that would already be a completed mobile as is. You can build onto this as much as you want to or as little as you want to if you like the more minimal look. I just basically start placing things on the surface and see how I want that to look. I think I might like the bigger one of those and maybe the smaller circle up here, although something to keep in mind is balance. This side is going to be pretty heavy because it's going to have another set on each side. That would basically make the whole mobile go like this with that tiny circle on one side. I might want to put something heavier. If you just hold them, you're going to totally feel the weight difference. I might want to put two light pieces here, I might not. It really doesn't matter that much but I would personally just want to counterbalance. Again, it doesn't matter what's next to each other because they're going to curve when they're hanging. I just want to place things and see what's going to happen. These are both round shapes. I don't know if I love those at the same level, so I might switch those out with this guy. They're about the same weight so that'll work really well. If you like asymmetrical, you would like where one hangs lower than the rest. Or you might like symmetry and balance where the whole thing is just this big, beautiful, full. What am I trying to say? Just equally balanced and that's great too. There's not a right or a wrong way to do this. Then in addition, just because I have extra pieces, doesn't mean that I have to use them. So you can mix and match, see what you want to use. Let's just say that this is what I want to create. This is the first round that I'm going to go with. Then after we build this I will show you how I would build onto it. There's going to be two steps. One, which is the necessary supplies that I talked about, and then the add on with those little jewelry jump rings to connect multiple elements. We got this planning stage out of the way so now let's connect it.
8. Assembly Time!: I have this in place still. What I'm going to do is just take the first two pieces, which is the top and then the first tier, and what I'm going to do is thread this through the tier, just like so. Then just the same way that I twisted the middle, I'm going to twist this end. I'm going to leave a little bit of space just so that I have enough to fully wrap around here. I have my hand, I'm going to have it this way and then flip it on top. Just rotate 180 degrees like so. As you can see in my first connection here, is completely facing the opposite way. What I do is I usually leave it as is, and then I connect everything. Then what I do is I take this part and I twist, whoops, not that part. You should always hold on to the area so that it doesn't twist everything, and then I twist. You can see what happened here was now as it's hanging, I've got my top and this is at a 45-degree angle rather than being straight this way or straight this way. That just helps with how things are hanging on composition. That's what I mean, where it's like, it doesn't matter where you set the pieces as you're building them because you can always adjust that once they are hanging. From there, I'm going to add my next piece here and get those pieces connected. I like to go in from the outside and then loop inward rather than looping outward. Because if I had put it in this way, then that loop is going to be on the outside and I just don't think that looks as nice. I'm looping inwards. This can be a little chaotic to start handling once you start building it, but don't fear. You'll just know, you'll figure it out. I'm going to hold that in place right here with my finger and then I'm going to loop that around like so. That connection is in place. Now, before I do anything else, I'm going to start building this the way that I had it laid out. I'm going to take my first piece and yes, it's got my fingerprints all over it, but we will be fixing that. Then I'm going to go in from the outside, same thing that I did up here, and then just loop upward. I'm going to hold that at the very end and loop upward, and then I've got it hanging and it's up and ready. Then what I like to do is make sure that this is really closed as much as possible because these brass sheets are so thin, they can slide out and we don't want that. The reason I do this now is because your pieces will start to get lost as you're building, so this makes it so that you can actually remember where you are at with this. Now, I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to hold where it's at and then slide my piece all the way down and flip-up. Oops, and that actually broke. I can do that again. That doesn't usually happen. I've actually never had that happen. Again, flip-up like this. That connection is nicely in place. You can see that when it hangs, it will be, I'll show you how a better angle of it hanging in just a bit. But when it hangs you can sample it as you go and see what that's going to look like, see what the balance is. There might be one that hangs lower than the other, but that's not a bad thing. It's just depending on what you want it to look like. Everything is undoable. You could always undo something and put a different piece on. You can always adjust as you go, so don't worry, nothing is permanent. I'm going to do the same thing, connect those two, and then add the rest of my pieces on. You might find that you want to connect your pieces, your elements before you connect the whole mobile, and that's okay too. I just like to build it this way because otherwise, I get confused. That's what I do. This just slipped off and that can happen. That's why I say make sure that your connections are really tight and sometimes I'll just use my needle nose pliers to do that because it's hard to make it. The round ones have that grip. Just connecting those two to where they actually touch those wires on all of those elements. You can hold up your mobile and see how it balances and all of its glory. This one looks, just write to me how fine is this.
9. Combine Elements: Now I'm going to show you what I mean by those extra pieces that you can have a lot of fun with to really make this dimensional and add just an extra element of awesome and intricacy. If you choose to go this route with me, here's what I do. Essentially, I do everything that we just did with planning our mobile. Only this time what I do is I will take pieces and put them together like this where I can visually see, okay, if this was hanging on this, if this was hanging on this, this is what it would look like. Sometimes I'll flip semicircles and then see like, oh, that would be a really cute combination or something where this might hang from here, or vice versa, be weird. But that's essentially what I'll do and see how that hangs, and then it just totally adds that extra. I'll show you a version of that just on one of these. How about we do this guy here. What I'll do here is I'll add a flat color and then I'm going to hammer this. Actually, it should be this one. No, this one. I'm going to hammer this circle and then I'll have this hammered one and then this blank one and then a hammered one. You can also flip it so it's like a circle here and then an added circle, just a different vibe. What I'll do is I'll take my wire cutter and then I'll get the bottom of this one. You want to make sure your space in-between the hole punch and the edge will be enough space to connect to that little O-ring in-between them both. If it's not, you'll have to just use a larger one. I keep these. This is where I really pay attention to that distance. Then I'll do the same thing. Basically what happens is now you want hole punches on the top and the bottom. I want to make sure that that's centered. I'll just screw it on just enough. See it's centered, okay. Got perfect amount of space in there, just tighten that and then loosen. Hopefully that gave me a hole. Do the same thing to the bottom side. Make sure it's centered. I guess that top one wasn't very centered, but it's okay. Then disconnect you'll see. Then I lay it out to where it's going to be. Then this one I already hole punched from the last time, so I'll just hammer that and then be right back with my hammered version. All right, so that's done. Then I can line them up like this. Then what I do is I go and then I grab my O-ring, just the size it's going to work. I grab it usually with my pliers. That one works and then I'll just open it up and then slide it through both of these to connect to them, and then I'll close it. Close like so. Open that up, slide this in, slide it in this one, and close that up like so. For added protection, make sure there's not a gap. Then that's going to look so cool hanging. That's the first way that you can enhance these. I would do this to several different areas. I might want to add one to here, I might want to add one to here. Basically you have total freedom here. To create the top, I just usually thread another wire through, usually something that's thinner or like a ribbon or a twine or something. That is essentially your mobile plus some added flare.
10. Suspending Your Mobile: When it comes time to finally suspend your piece, there's a couple ways to do this. You remember that little loop that we created. You can just string some twine through that or string of any kind, you can also use the same type of metal that you used and just twist it at the bottom and then also at the top to create a suspension. I actually used an 18 gauge wire on this one hanging here because that's what I had on hand that was closest to me and I just wanted to get it up. I was too excited, but I've also used twine on previous ones as well. You could use ceiling hooks or just about anything. Get creative with that part, don't overthink it, just get it up there. When it comes to placement, get creative with that too I've got mine actually in front of this air vent right here, so it actually is constantly moving, which I'm a big fan of.
11. Next Steps: If you've made it this far, you probably have a beautiful kinetic mobile ready to hang. I bet it just looks incredible. I would love to see what you created. Please be sure to upload it to the project gallery because I know that these projects come in all shapes and sizes and I can't wait to see how you interpreted yours. Thanks again, you guys. Be sure to check out my other classes, follow me, and then also head over to thepigeonletters.com to grab some the art freebies all the time. I'll see you guys next time.
Peggy Dean, Top Teacher | The Pigeon Letters
