pur-sew-na: a person’s perceived personality as indicated by their choice of purse or handbag

This post was originally published by Amy Bruce of Jacksonville, FL on her blog www.pursewna.blogspot.com. Amy owns an Etsy store full of, not only purses, but wreathes, banners, stuffed animals, and personal accessories. What ties all of Amy’s creations together is her love of fabrics. At Luna Bazaar we couldn’t help but notice that almost all of Amy’s products are made of fabric, except for this paper lantern mobile! She’s come up with a clever way to suspend the lanterns, so we wanted to share it with you on the Luna Bazaar blog. Take it away, Amy!

Paper Lantern Mobile for a Baby Girl’s Room.

I saw this picture months ago and had thought about doing it for baby girl #2’s nursery.

source: ashleyann photography blog

I love how whimsical and fun this is! Isn’t it gorgeous? I love the color combination too – I’m a sucker for coral in any way shape or form…. AND – it seemed fairly simple for me to figure out how to do on my own – also a HUGE plus!

I figured that I’d start with a grid to hang the lanterns and such from so I purchased three dowels at Michael’s, sawed them in half and spray painted them white. I then laid them out in the grid pattern like this:

I used yarn leftover from my wedding favors (yep – I’ve had that yarn for 5 years!) to wrap the dowels together. From there I started hanging the lanterns from the grid in my sewing room:

Here they are all tied but sitting on my table…. then I tried taking this into the baby’s room and hanging. Yeah – as you can guess, it didn’t really work out well. So I started again. I cut all the yarn from the lanterns so I once again had the bare grid and hung it from the ceiling. I used simple white eye hooks that I bought at Target – by holding the grid up with one hand on the ceiling, I used my other hand to mark five different spots with a pencil to know where to put the eye hooks. (I’m very scientific and exact about this whole thing, can you tell?)

The grid hanging on the ceiling from the eye hooks. I used yarn ‘loops’ to attach the grid to the eye hooks…. from there I just started hanging each lantern. The lanterns came from both World Market (the largest aqua/blue lantern that was on sale for $4) and from a great website called Luna Bazaar. I bought

five different sized lanterns/honeycombs from them and it was about $22 including shipping. The smallest lanterns which are referred to as “no frills lanterns” were only $0.95! The white eyelet one was more like $5.95.

The pom pom was made using tissue paper I picked up at Target – probably about $1.99 for the pack. You too can make these simple pom pom’s using this great Martha Stewart Tutorial

I played around a lot with lengths and placement – I wanted to have it look ‘thrown together’ but still symmetrical… if that makes any sense at all.

The finished product! The paper stringed garland was made using a scallop punch, scrapbook paper I already had and then they were all sewn together with white thread! I had them in one long string and was going to loop it but I ended up hanging it in a couple places, cutting and re-stringing on the grid again.

What do you guys think? This is one of my FAVORITE ‘pieces’ in the baby’s room.

Thanks, Amy! Thanks, too, to your husband for working with you on the pictures. This outdoor shot shows what the grid of the mobile looks like from above:

This is my favorite picture of the ones you sent: I hope you don’t mind that I erased your arms! I think the free-floating paper lanterns in the sky look really great. Thanks to both of you.

Good luck with the new little occupant of your Newborn Room! Dorothy.