This 3D watercolor mobile for All About Bugs Week allows multiple Camp Fun campers to combine their individual butterfly creations into one beautiful work of art! My daughters Stella and Hazel spent a few nights before dinner painting these butterflies and embellishing them with sparkly rhinestone jewels. Once we’d painted enough, I hung them from an embroidery hoop to create a one-of-a-kind mobile to hang in the window this summer. Read on to see how the mobile came together, and don’t miss our other fun projects for All About Bugs Week of Camp Fun!
The butterflies comes in flat pieces that can be slotted together. You’ll want to paint as many pairs as you need for your mobile. We used a 12″ embroidery hoop and filled it with 11 butterflies (22 pieces total). To paint our butterflies we used pastel watercolors for a soft effect, but any watercolor or tempera paint would work great for this project!
Add adhesive jewels to give the butterflies a little extra sparkle. This was the girls’ favorite part! One pack of rhinestones was enough for all the butterflies on the mobile.
Once you’ve painted all the butterflies, slot two pieces together to create a 3D butterfly by creating a slit in one of the butterflies. I used a small dab of hot glue along one seam to help hold the 3D structure of the butterfly.
To hang the butterflies onto the mobile, use a hole punch to create a hold at the top and thread a piece of rickrack trim (see pastel rickrack trim here) through the hole, which I secured with a dab of hot glue. Then I separated the embroidery hoop into its two pieces and glued the other end of the rickrack trim to the inside edge of the larger (outside) embroidery hoop. I repeated the process to hang each butterfly, varying the length of the rickrack trim for each, and spacing them far enough apart so the butterflies wouldn’t touch each other.
To create the hanger for the mobile, I hot glued three lengths of rickrack to the outside edge of the smaller (inner) embroidery hoop, spacing them evenly around the hoop. Then I tied the 3 pieces of rickrack together into a knot at the top.
Connect the inner and outer rings of the embroidery hoop together to create your mobile! Stella and Hazel were so excited to see all their hard work come together to create this beautiful mobile!
Be sure to check out all of our summer camp craft ideas and activities for the All About Bugs Week of Camp Fun. Be sure to also check out the Make Your Own Bug Jars craft for this week of Camp Fun. Follow along with our Summer Camp Fun Series! Be sure to share your projects with us on Instagram by using the hashtag #OTCampFun.