Sounds like wings!

If you don't picture itty bitty wee baby 11 year old Harry Potter saying that, I just...I dunno about you. 

     Today I started work on a mobile for the Harry Potter nursery. You may have seen a winged-key mobile floating around on Pinterest for a while, if you've hopped on the bandwagon and started mainlining craft projects and cake recipes and other assorted Pinterest-cultivated heroin. I'll pop the picture in here, but I can't seem to find the original source, since the pins all link back to a non-existent blog or various tumblr pages.

 

     But I envisioned my version of this being a little lighter, brighter, and more attractive to baby eyeballs. Not to mention shinier. Babies love shiny things, I hear. Like little magpies, except babies aren't usually believed to be harbingers of doom/servants of Satan. Magpies, man. They get such a bad rep. To be fair, they do murder a lot of other birds, but mourn the death of one of their own with observable funereal habits, and if that doesn't say "Magpie supremacists plot takeover of entire bird kingdom" then I don't know what does. Anyway, keys. Here's my process: 

1. Gather supplies! Old keys (a lot of antique stores will have big boxes of keys that you can pick from, in case you don't have a bin of rusty old keys sitting around from your previous life as the warden of a Victorian insane asylum), wire, fabric glue, hot glue, and iridescent fabric.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Bend the wire into something roughly resembling a wing shape. This is a rather thin wire, just thick enough to hold the shape you give it, so I just used my hands. If you use a thicker gauge, you might need to bust out the pliers. I started off with something super simple, but plan to get more adventurous (double wings, pointed wings, butterfly style wings...). Make sure the wing style you choose fits well with the key you're working with. Or don't! It's Harry Potter, things don't have to make sense. Do what you feel, follow your heart, and so forth with the encouragement.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Next, glue the fabric to the wire using fabric glue. Just run some glue along the wire on one side, plop it down, hit the other side of the wire with some glue, and fold the fabric on top of it. Then set something reasonably heavy (a book or something, not like, your car) on top and let it dry for a while.
    

   

   Thanks mom for being my hand model!
   
   
   

4. Once it's all dry, just trim around the outside as closely as you like. I left a little bit of room because I like the idea of the fabric fraying a bit and making a really soft, time-worn look. But if you're into precision, you could cut close to the wire with an x-acto knife. Then a blob of hot glue will keep the wings attached to the keys, and you're done!
     
   
   
   
   

     I wish I could accurately capture how pretty the colors in the fabric are in movement. They catch the light and turn blue and pink and purple depending on the angle. It's pretty! I'll definitely post some pictures when I've made some more and put them all together on the mobile. I think it's going to turn out really nice!