A Rainbow of Birds

About two years ago I made a few of these colorful paper birds with my Little Mr. and his friend. They played with the birds for a while and then, every so often, I would find them tucked under a stack of papers or in a basket. I kept thinking to myself that it would be fun to make a few more birds and string them up in a colorful mobile. With the baby coming this seemed like a perfect activity -- something new and pretty for the baby room.


We started out by cutting templates and tracing around them on colorful paper.

We decorated the birds...

Taped on the wings...

And added some tail feathers...

(Note: I personally like using white glue, but with children, I prefer to use tape, staples and glue-stick for attaching things. For a decorative project like this, the means of attachment might be negotiable, but especially when we're making puppets or something they want to play with, I'd rather not have children wait for glue to dry... it's fun to finish the project and start playing right away!)

After all the coloring and taping was done, I got out my needle and heavy-weight thread, pre-cut thread into 3 or 4-foot lengths and then attached the thread at the balance-point above the wings. (Note: before you tie the thread, it's advisable to pick up the bird by the un-tied thread to assure it's balancing evenly. It's difficult to hit the balance point on the first try, and each bird will be slightly different unless wing placement is precisely identical on each bird. Some of my birds have 2 or 3 needle holes in their backs.)

After each bird had a length of thread tied to its back, I tied them onto an embroidery hoop (you could paint the hoop if you like... we preferred to leave our hoop its original wood color.) We decided to stagger the birds so I tied some hanging at 6 inches and some hanging at 12 inches.

Once our 6 birds were tied to the hoop, we still had 2 or 3 feet of extra thread from each bird. I gathered these pieces in my hand, made sure the mobile was hanging level and then knotted all the strings together. With the string left over at the top, I tied a loop for hanging.