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Lesson Info
Constructing the Hanging Structure
Now that you've created your first two geometric elements, the cube and the diamond shape, you essentially have all the knowledge you need to complete an entire family structure. Now, I want to show you examples of this they're hanging here in my studio, in my studio has a lot of stuff going on the wall, so it's a little bit difficult to see these really fine details, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to hold this piece of board just you can see what I'm talking about with this multi colored example here I've created two large cubes and that's what I've used is my primary hanging structures off of the corners of that, then you can see, I've created a siri's of the diamond shapes and the smaller cube shapes, and those were created just by cutting the fooling straws in half, so that is one himal ee, but I want to show you one additional variation for creating a hanging structure, and this is going to look what I affectionately refer to as a star ship or a space ship in this example I'...
ve got here with the black mobile gonna hold the board up again seem kind of sea, but up at the very top the reason I've done this it's not a true off to he drawn, but what it does is it creates a lot wider reach for your elements toe hang off of it creates a little bit more dramatic mobile and it gives them a little bit more movement. Ah, little space for some kinetic playas they twirl around, they're not bumping into each other as much. So let's, go ahead and make our spaceship. All right, so our spaceship hanging structure is really a combination of both our cube form and our diamond form it's just a little bit of a hybrid between the two. Now the final himal ee mobile that I'm going to construct in the course today is going to be multi colored, both the pink in the orange. So this is actually what I'm going for, where I've got a central pink cube, and then the longer, elongated triangular forms in orange on the ends. So what you want to do just to start this particular piece is create a small cube form, and again, I've just taken the full length straws, have cut them in half and tied them all together to create this doctor he drawn now what we want to do is we want to add on our orange elements off of the lower half of the cube, I kept the strings on the end for my last tie again, just sort of as, uh a good way to be ableto hang it or connected to the string that I'm going to use to suspended from the ceiling but it's also a good reference point for me because I know that this is the top of my cube so the small cube is as we stated before twelve segments for the the triangles that are going to go off the lower portion you're going to need another twelve but we're going to do these in the full length and so I'm going to do these in the orange so for eight and twelve it's a little bit less of an elegant tie when you're putting thiss component together you don't need as long a piece of string so this one I may be doing four feet long and we'll see as I tie it on if that's too long or too short but what I'm going to start by doing is this is my top point I'm going to pick any one of my central middle points and I'm going to tie one end of the string onto it so I'm simply going toe loop it through and do a quick double not just to make it nice and secure you don't need to worry about leaving a tale for this one in fact, that little tail that I've got there I'm just going to go ahead and trim that off, leaving me that long piece to work with so with that long piece I'm now going to string on two of the long straw segments in the orange no again, you can do this in any color combination you'd like that's part of the fun um the mobile that I showed you just a moment ago had all four of the neon straw colors that I purchased she's a really happy mobile that maybe you want something a little more monochromatic ok, so I've gotten my top I'm strong two segments off of one end and I'm going to take this end of my straw and I'm going to tie it to the next point over I could point tie it to that one or it could tie it to that one as long as it's the next consecutive points over in the center. So for this I'm just going to go through that points loosely bring it through so that that corner is nice and snug. This is going to be very similar to the tying techniques that we used when we were creating the cube and the diamond initially I'm just looping it around to hold it in place now is best I can I'm going to kind of secure that intersection with my left hand and then a loop my longer tail through to my same little tying technique where I put my hand through the bottom loop, grab that upper peace and pull it through slowly and then he's going to kind of pull it nice and secure and then pull that not right down into the corner so at this point you've got top of your cube you've got this lovely little flap off of one side now that all the is left to do is to take one additional piece and connect this point to the bottom point of the cube and so that I don't have to cut in re string I'm going to do a little trick where I take my long piece and I'm going to feed it back through one of these longer straws, so I'm just going to stick it in the end and feed that through till it comes out at the bottom point here I'm going to go ahead and pull that through so now it's coming out of the bottom of my elongated orange triangle and I'm going to take the end string it into another long orange segment string that all the way through. So what we want to happen is we want this last piece to connect up to the bottom of your pink cube and that's going to create the first of the four hanging elements um so we'll just take this I'm going to loop the long end underneath the bottom of my cube not worrying about tying at first I just kind of want to pull it so it's nice and snug like that once you've done that, then go ahead, loop it through and we can tie a knot in polling that nice and snug down towards the center. Now you can see I kind of overestimated the length of string that I needed and probably a foot and a half too long. Totally fine. You can actually save this. You'll use it later when we're constructing all of your mobile elements. So at this point, what you have is your basic cube form done in the pink, and we've got the first of the four elongated triangle elements hanging off the side. Now you do want to keep in mind where my hand is holding the string that is the top portion and that's where your mobile is going toe hang, suspend from the ceiling, you want to build the four or the three remaining triangles off of the lower portion because this is what we're going for so that we've got it on all four sides. So I'm going to go ahead now and continue building these remaining three sides to create our little spaceship hanging structure.
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Ratings and Reviews
SunSoBright
I'm not a crafter but watched this out of curiosity and did not even know what a Himmell mobile was. I have to say I've become a Robert Mahar fan. He explains some of the history behind the Himmell mobiles and makes things simple yet goes into details and gives tips that make for a very neat and lovely and fun art piece. Love the idea of making one of these to hang plants! I will keep an eye out for more of Robert Mahar classes as I love his instruction.
Anna Butterfield
I really enjoy Robert Mahar's classes. He's an excellent tutor, very encouraging and always does such fun and interesting projects. My 8yo daughter and I have been working on these Himmeli this afternoon. Will take another couple of goes before Im ready to post the picture. But a very enjoyable class
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