When I started planning out our nursery, I knew that I wanted a travel theme; however, I wanted it to be different than the standard planes, suitcases, or vintage pictures. I love things like maps and skylines and wanted to incorporate those into my nursery.

One place where I wasn’t sure how to decorate was with the baby mobile. I finally decided on doing a baby mobile with Hot Air Balloons. So the first thing I did was look at etsy. I fell in love with a gorgeous 3D fabric mobile; however, it was $300 and I couldn’t really justify spending that much on it. So I started thinking DIY. I do have to say, about half way through this project and covered in glue, spending $300 wasn’t sounding so bad.

DIY Paper Hot Air Balloon Baby Mobile

I knew that I wanted a 3D aspect to the mobile so I was glad when I found a 3D Hot Air Balloon shape in the Silhouette Studio design store. It consists of 6 Hot Air Balloon shapes which can be cut out of a 12×12 sheet of paper. I really wanted some map aspects into the mobile so I was glad when I found some map scrapbooking paper (otherwise I was going to go pick up some old atlases to cut up). I also found some fun papers such as bunting, polka dots, glitter, and quarter-foil to add to the hot air balloons.

Once the hot air balloon sections were cut, I created combinations of the different papers and glued them together. I also glued a string of bakers twine into the balloon to use to hang it (make sure to give some extra length, it can always be shortened later).

For the mobile itself, I used this hanging photo mobile which will hold 10 hot air balloons. Many of the strings ended up getting cut quite a bit as the mobile itself hangs down pretty low. I would recommend using a Light Tack mat for this project; I had a couple balloons which needed to be repaired where the basket attaches to the rest of the balloon as the paper ripped when taking it off the mat.

This DIY Paper Hot Air Balloon Baby Mobile was the perfect addition to our nursery. It continued the travel theme; and added some fun colors and patterns to the room. I do have to say that this project took a bit longer than originally anticipated. My estimation is that from start to finish, this baby mobile took roughly 6 hours to complete (hence the reason I started contemplating simply buying one about half way through).

I am so glad that I stuck with this project as I absolutely love how it turned out. The hot air balloons appear to float around as the air moves in the room.