The Geekiest Baby: A Brain-Stimulating Mobile

Earlier this week, I shared my frustration with gender-ified, bland baby things and did my best to rectify the situation. Well, another pet peeve I have is how baby things tend to be so pastel. It's like somebody took a normal room or item and then turned the color saturation dial waaaay down. This strikes me as silly for a couple of reasons:

1) Babies are dirty (so I hear). If they're going to be spitting up and pooping on things, shouldn't we be going for darker colors and busier patterns to camouflage those suspicious stains? This is exactly why I got a dark gray car: so that it's less obvious that I haven't washed it in over half a year. (Unfortunately, this doesn't work as well for dark clothing, since it just serves to better show off all the cat hair I've got on me.)

2) Babies don't register all those washed-out colors very well. Child development research shows that a baby's visual development is best stimulated by high contrast patterns, specifically with the colors black, white, and red. Of course, by that token, the ideal nursery theme would be Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd or Alice in Wonderland costume wardrobe. Unfortunately, I don't think a murdering barber who promotes cannibalism is the most appropriate role model for a Small Human Being...

Anyway, as I said, SHB's nursery theme is "Enchantment Under the Sea," so rather than spend money on a pastel mobile that couldn't even be bothered to include more than one type of sea animal (although the coordinating bedding *is* awfully cute, I must admit), I figured I could just make my own. There are lots of tutorials out there showing how to make a mobile with varying levels of complexity, and there are templates out there with high-contrast black and white patterns, so with the help of this tutorial, I came up with my own low-budget, under the sea themed mobile. 

Featuring waves, a starfish, a sailboat, bubbles, coral, a generic fish, and a crab with the wrong number of legs...

All dangling from an embroidery hoop!

The shapes were free-handed onto some stash felt and fleece scraps, then I sewed some twill tape to the backs for hanging. I thought about painting the hoop and getting black and white ribbon, but decided that I didn't care enough, so I left the hoop alone and just used leftover wedding ribbon for hanging everything.

It's not as clean and pretty as some of the tutorials, but it's functional (as long as you're not expecting it to play music and twirl around).

The patterned squares can theoretically be switched out for other ones. I don't think I'll be making more, though...

Now that I look at it some more, I find the crab's smile really creepy. 

I WILL HAUNT YOUR DREAMS, SEARCHING ENDLESSLY FOR MY MISSING LEGS. 

Next up: under the sea themed art!