DIY Octahedral Mobile — cordially, mads.

Eager to make a one of a kind art piece for your apartment or dorm room? Us too. That’s why we crafted this graphic octahedral mobile! Mobiles are an awesome way to fill space with an airy and funky vibe.

All you’ll need is cardstock paper, string, beads, an embroidery hoop, scissors, a ruler, and a hot glue gun. The quantity of paper, string, and size of hoop is all up to you! Know how large you want it to be and go from there! Next, you’ll need to print out the template below. Again, you’ll have to play with the scale of the template for how big you’ll want the prisms.

Use the template to outline all the cut outs onto your cardstock. Cut those out and use the help of a ruler or other straight edge to make all the appropriate folds. After a lot of cutting and folding, time to glue. We suggest doing the gluing in stages. Start by gluing four sides together, leaving three sides free. This way it’s faster to get them onto the string.

Now cut 6-8 pieces of string all the same length, however long you wish! Tie a knot towards the bottom of the string and lace a bead to rest on top of the knot. This will act as a stopper for a prism. Put the string into place inside the prism allowing for the ends of the string to come out at the top and bottom of the prism. Glue it shut and you’re done! Make more knots and keep gluing! Plan ahead with how you space them or play around as you go! It’s hard to go wrong with this fun fixture.

Once you have all your prisms glued and in place, it’s time to prep your embroidery hoop. You only need the inside hoop to give you a strong backbone. Tie three pieces of string to the hoop spread out evenly. Gather them in the middle, tie them in a knot, and use the excess to hook to your ceiling. Now simply tie all the prism strings to the hoop spread evenly apart.

Phew. Lots of instructions, but an awesome end result. The fabulous thing about this mobile is that you can play around with the lengths of string, spacing of prisms, or color of paper. Some other ideas we have are using your school or sorority colors, cut out photos to glue on the sides of some of the prisms, or even create an ombre effect!

This post was originally published to the Lala.