Colourful Crane Mobile

by ChrysN

26K52111

Intro: Colourful Crane Mobile

A few year back I had folded a bunch of origami cranes that I had hanging from a long strand in the corner of my room.  I got a bit bored with the way it look so I made a mobile with the cranes to change things up.  The cranes were in pastel shades so I arranged them like a rainbow.  The cranes move gently in breeze and liven up the room much more then they did before.

STEP 1: What You Will Need

STEP 2: The Frame

First I formed two circles with the 20 gauge wire.  The larger has a diameter of 25cm and the smaller circle 15cm. I then painted them white with craft paint.  Once that had dried I used white embroidery thread to tie the two circles together at 4 points and left long strands of thread at each point for hanging the mobile.

STEP 3: The Cranes

I had folded these cranes a few years back so the tedious part of this project is already done.  For instructions on how to fold a crane there are several instructables available for that: How to make an origami crane.  I used six pastel colours for my mobile.  There are around a hundred cranes, though not in equal numbers of each colour (I didn't have very much purple).  I sorted the colours and divided them into groups of how many cranes I want on each string.  There are 3-6 strings of each colour with 3-5 cranes per string.

To string the cranes, I first knotted the tread at one end then I added a bead.  I added the crane by drawing the needle through the gap between the head and tail at the bottom and piercing through the paper at the top.  I added another bead about 2-3cm further up the thread, tied it in place then added another crane so it sits on top of the bead. I added the rest of the cranes in this fashion once the strand was complete. I left about 5-10 cm of thread for tying it to the wires.  I found a place to hang them up while I was finishing the rest so that they don't get tangled (and my cat can't get at them).

STEP 4: Hang Your Cranes

Now that the cranes have been strung it is time to decide how to arrange them.  I wanted rows of colours like a rainbow.  To make it easier to tie the strands on, I hung the frame to raise it up.  I tied the strands to the frame one row at a time spreading them out across the circles .  Once all of the strands are hung, I tied the embroidery thread from the frame to a key ring for easy hanging.

11 Comments

SteveDonie 11 years ago

Very nice. My daughter's class did one a couple of years ago with 1000 cranes. I built a free-standing stand for them based on a design one of the children made. The whole thing was sold at the schools annual fundraising auction. The parent that bought it ended up giving several of the 100-crane sub-assemblies to the oldest children in the class. There are some photos of it at http://album.donie.us/incoming/2011-03NovaCraneMobile/2011-03NovaCraneMobile.html

Eh Lie Us! 11 years ago

Good night, Irene! that's amazing work. It's always nice to see project that involve kids and parents.

ChrysN 11 years ago

Wow, that looks gorgeous!

rcowlishaw 11 years ago

One of the things I've done to string cranes (like, say, 1,000) was to use a "wreath form" which was 2 or 3 wire circles joined together.

aflores32 11 years ago

Nice, my son does origami since he was very young. Im going to have him make me one. Thanks for showing it. :-)

mclare50 11 years ago

Wow, this is amazing! I need to make it!

sunshiine 11 years ago

Gorgeous as always! Hope your day is grand!
sunshiine

Penolopy Bulnick 11 years ago

How fun! Loving all the colors! I also keep meaning to try to fold ones of those, they seem so fun :)