Wee nest

Here is a pic of the nest with all the wool wrapped and secured and another pic of the nest after it has been "furnished" with feathers and eggs.

Wee nest tutorial

Okay, here is my wee nest tutorial for anyone wishing to make a funny little nest to put a bird and some eggs in.

1. cut 25cm lengths of wire (I used plain old hobby wire from bunnings ) until you have 6 lengths.

start with 2 pieces and make a cross. twist the pieces in the middle so they are joined.

Get your next 2 pieces and place in between the cross to form an X and bend and twist these together with the first 2.

Take the final 2 pieces and place in between the other wires so they are opposite each other and twist together. You will have to bend the X pieces around a bit so the next to can fit in evenly.

You should end up with something like this-

Don't worry if the bit in the middle is a bit messy as it will be covered in wool.

2. Grab some interesting looking wool ( one was sort of nobbly and had different colours throughout and the other one was a bit feathery looking) in one or two sorts.

Tie the main wool onto the centre of the wires and start to wrap around going in-out-in-out (remember those paddle pop xmas decorations we made when we were little?) until you have gone around a few times.

3. take a length (1m or so) of the other colour wool and wrap the 2 wools together til it runs out then keep wrapping a bit more with just the no 1. wool. Then take another length and do a bit more with the 2 wools again.

4. As you start to get further out start to bend the wire upwards to form a shallow bowl shape and keep wrapping until you have the desired size nest you want. Tie off the wool on one of the wires.

5. bend the wires over and loop the end around the next wire to form the rim of the nest. Go all the way round and reshape the rim if needed to be nice and round. (if your nest is quite little, cut the wires down a bit before bending and looping)

6. grab some more wool and weave it around the top to conceal the wires going in and out of each loopy bit a few times til all the wire is covered.

7. find some cute little eggs and some speckledy feathers to put in your nest and hopefully a lovely bird will decide to call it home!

Birdy Mobile

Okay, I finished the bird mobile I wanted to make for littlest fishes bedroom. It was a bit trickier than I thought it would be to balance the sticks and have everything hanging nicely but i got there in the end.

Making the birds was easy as I used the free pattern from Spool sewing's website and just added some felt wings as I thought they looked a little bare. And I actually managed to make a nest though the one I put on the mobile wasn't the one I made from the fabric scraps.

I decided to use wool for the mobile one as I liked the way in which the first one was made but wasn't happy with the finished look. So I made up the wool one in exactly the same way but it looked a bit more like a nest. I might put on a quick tutorial on how to make the nest as it was really easy and is fun to do.

I lined the nest with some speckledy feathers and put some "eggs" in the nest. (they were actually silk worm cocoons that were dyed a nice bright red.

I started off using wire to attach the birds to the sticks but that got a bit messy and they weren't staying put in their spots, they kept slipping around the stick.

so I tried the hot glue gun instead and that seemed to work quite well. I still used wire to string the branches together and hold the nest on. All in all it was a good project to try and it looks pretty hanging in her room.