Supplies

• 14 in. wood embroidery hoop
• 10 in. wood embroidery hoop
• Fabric strips
• Fabric glue
• Double sided tape
• Clear cord
• Keys
• Transparent paper
• Cricut (optional)
• Scissors
• Clear Command hooks (for hanging)

A lot of my decorations are things that I’ve seen on Pinterest, Google, Etsy, you name it. Every now and then though I’ll come up with something unique. This is one of those pieces. I of course wanted to incorporate the floating keys into a decoration but I wanted to add a little something extra to them rather than just hang them from the ceiling. For a birthday party I was asked to decorate I was given the challenge of creating a Gryffindor common room. It’s not difficult to work their colors into the blankets and pillows but I wanted there to also be a statement piece. I was gathering the material to make a Marauders Map tie blanket at JOANN when I found these long strips of red and yellow fabric in the discount bin. From there my mind went spinning!

What I ended up with was some type of cloth draped key mobile. And I love it! I have a few updates in mind I’ll make when I have the time. One would be to add fabric to fill in-between the strips so it doesn’t look so bare. The other thing would be to add another hoop between the 14 in. and 10 in. so that the keys hang down lower. Almost giving the center a chandelier look.

With the 14 in. hoop I alternated between red and yellow strips. I first placed a layer of double sided tape along the outer edge of the hoop to hold down the fabric as I wrapped it around. Make sure that you wrap all of your fabric in the same direction so that when it comes time to hang it up there aren’t some pieces showing the wrong side. You can tell it’s the wrong side because the color will look dull. I stuck one end of the fabric on the hoop, wrapped it around the hoop once and when it came back to the outer edge I put a small line of fabric glue down and pressed the strip over it. Press down on the fabric and wipe away any excess glue that comes out. I glued four strips at a time and then let them dry before doing more. 

Once the large hoop was finished I moved onto the 10 in. hoop. At first I alternated by wrapping both red and yellow fabric strips around it but I wasn’t a fan of how it looked. I ended up wrapping the whole thing in orangish gold strips that came in the yellow pack.

While the hoops dried I got to work on the keys, which I found at Spirit Halloween. I found the wing design through a simple Google search. I uploaded the JPEG into my Cricut Design Space and removed the white space around the wing so that only the wing pattern remained. From that the Cricut was able to look at the design and draw out the wings. I had it draw out three different sizes so I could see what size would work best.

I ended up using two sizes, the small and the medium. I duplicated each size in the design space as many times as needed and then had the Cricut draw out the wings on the clear paper. If you don’t have a Cricut but like the idea of having the wings on clear paper you can always print out the wings and trace them by hand. I take full advantage of my Cricut and use it whenever possible. Before I glued the wings onto the keys I first tied a piece of clear cord onto them. As I mentioned in my floating candles post, this cord doesn’t keep a knot very well. After you tie it around the key, place a drop of hot glue on it to keep it from becoming undone. You’ll later hide this by gluing the wing over it. Cut the cord at different lengths so that the keys aren’t all hanging on the same plane.

To attach the two hoops I measured out four strands of clear cord, tying one end to the 14 in. hoop and the other to the 10 in. hoop evenly spacing them apart. Next I tied the keys all around the 10 in. hoop. Remember, put a small drop of hot glue on each knot to make sure it stays. I didn’t have a problem with any of them coming undone from this method but when I add onto this decoration I’ll try a different kind of cord.

Hanging it up was a bit tricky. What worked in the end were clear Command hooks. Not saying this is the best way to hang this up but it never fell and hit a kid so I consider that a win! I used six hooks and evenly spaced them apart. I stuck three down on one side first, placed the hoop within the hooks and then hooked the hoop with the other three and stuck them to the ceiling. This made sure that the hoop was resting tightly in all the hooks to keep it from slipping out. To make the strips stick to the ceiling I used a few rolled pieces of blue painters tape. It just so happened that this was the perfect size to put around this small ceiling vent. When the air kicked on it looked like the keys were moving around which gave it an extra magical touch.