My First ever Mobile was a Disaster!
Last year I opened my online course ‘Making Mobiles’ This course has its own Facebook group where students can ask questions and also share their work. This was such an inspiration to me, their mobiles are amazing! (check them out here)
It made me look back on my own journey how I got started with making mobiles in the first place, and as is usually the case with me, it was a winding journey full of serendipity and excitement.
I made a chain from galvanised wire to hang above my workbench so I could dry my painted papers easily. The chain was made up of all sorts of free-form shapes and had a few leaf shapes bunched at one end.
As it happened I had some scraps of handmade tissue on my table from another project, so I thought I’d make a few more shapes and glue the paper to them and that was all that happened for a while… they must have been laying around my desk for weeks before the next nudge came.
It was when I was investigating Alexander Calder’s jewellery on Pinterest, and you know what a rabbit hole Pinterest is right?
No surprise either that the next day there were a lot of Calder-related images in my home feed, including the magnificent mobiles he made!!!! Wow!!!! Of course, I’d known about them but I never made the connection until then.
So one thing lead to another and soon I’d made a lot more leaf shapes, covered them with paper and with a lot of trial and error made my very first mobile!
It was rough. I hung it up high, so nobody could see all the things that were wrong with it! The paper didn’t stick to the wire properly and the glue I used caused a reaction that made the wire rust.
But it had one thing going for it, even the lightest breeze made it twirl!
It’s a far cry from my latest mobile which is my favourite so far!
There are a lot of hours in my new mobiles, but the process is not hard now that I’ve got the whole process worked out, and I love coming up with new variations! The ultimate outcome of my journey is to share it with the world, so the best way was to create an online course. that way I can help people from all over to get started creating their own beautiful mobiles, without all the hassle and disappointments I had in the beginning!!
