Space Mobile!

Shortly after Maximilian was born, I decided that he should get a mobile to place over his crib. I knew what theme I wanted. I wanted a space mobile. I looked all over, but couldn’t find any in stores, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to spend 90 bucks on one from Etsy, so I decided to make one myself. Normally, these things are made out felt, but not having a sewing machine, decided make Maximilian’s out of paper.

I knew basically what I wanted. I wanted a rocket, stars, and the sun, and some planets. I bought some colored card stock and got to work. Since I was using paper, I decided that the different elements would look better if I went with a layered look. For the sun, I cut out a large yellow circle along with a gold ring. I glued the ring to disc and once dry, I took scissors and free cut sunbeams. I wasn’t trying to to be perfect, but rather kind of whimsical. For the planets and, I cut out a red circle for Mars and a blue circle for Earth. I cut out rough ice caps for Mars and glued those into place. I then shaded parts of the surface with a red marker to simulate the surface’s shading. Continents were cut out free handed with an x-acto knife from green and white paper and glued on to Earth.

I spent the most time on the rocket. I wanted a classic sci-fi rocket, like the Raygun Gothic Rocket. In omnigraffle, I drew out the rocket’s outline (PDF) and major features. I printed this template out on normal printer paper and used it as a guide to cut out the main rocket body and fins out of white card stock. I think cut out and glued black fins over the white fins, and placed three blue circles as portholes along the body on both sides of the rocket. Using a sharpie, I drew the outline of the hatch and labeled the rocket in NASA-worm-like “MAX”.

In order to hang the stars, I bought a small wooden cross-stitch ring and drilled four equidistant holes in it. I hung the stars at different heights from each hole with string. I then connected the opposing holes together with string in order to create a central anchor point.

Ming had earlier bought a rather pedestrian mobile that featured soccer balls and baseballs on it. I removed those, and instead fastened the new elements to the frame using string. Using a pre-existing frame was a good choice because it solved the anchoring and balance problems.

As Maximilian began to sit up and grab things, we had to take down the mobile because we were afraid that he might be able to pull off the pieces and eat them. I put them in a folder and will probably put them back up later, but this time hanging them directly from the ceiling along with more realistic space probe paper models.