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.

• 5 cm (~2inch) square Origami paper
• 20 gauge wire
• Small beads(3-5cm diameter)
• Needle and thread
• Key ring

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.

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).

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.