How To: Make An Abstract Mobile

How we wish we had the means to collect all the past issues of Popular Science Monthly, most notably for great how-to instructions like this 1954 feature about making your own Eames era mobile...

Retro-tastic blog Dinosaurs and Robots has posted the easy to follow instructions that require cardboard or light-gauge sheet metal, soft 16-gauge wire and a bit of trial and error to get the balance right using their downloadable template.

[via BoingBoing]

Comments (11)

omg, im totally making this!

posted by bellaknollie on March 12th 2009 at 8:38pm
view bellaknollie's profile

Love you for this, Gregory.

posted by wig3000 on March 12th 2009 at 8:48pm
view wig3000's profile

AWESOME!

posted by mskk on March 12th 2009 at 9:38pm
view mskk's profile

Not to be picky, but Alexander Calder is one of my favorite artists, and this should really be called a Calder-type mobile.
If you are only familiar with the knock offs, do take some time to check out the real thing. He is most famous for his wonderful mobiles, but his other stuff is also amazing.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30429594@N00/sets/72157615167560744/

posted by mrs yow on March 12th 2009 at 9:56pm
view mrs yow's profile

Great idea! I'm already thinking of possible color combinations...

If someone makes it, please share the pictures with us.

posted by gal on March 13th 2009 at 5:14am
view gal's profile

I thought about the same thing reading the post, 'mrs yow'. Thanks for the link!

posted by Ferdinand on March 13th 2009 at 7:13am
view Ferdinand's profile

i am totally doing this!! Thank you so much for this post!

posted by royaltygirl on March 13th 2009 at 10:18am
view royaltygirl's profile

Can't afford to collect old issues of magazines? This is why God invented libraries! A lot of libraries are having to cut back on back issues of magazines, but chances are that if you ask for help, your local reference librarian can track down a place that has them, sometimes to borrow, sometimes to go visit... (My library has back issues of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics either hard copy or microfiche back to the 1970's, for example...)

posted by SherryBinNH on March 13th 2009 at 1:02pm
view SherryBinNH's profile

More retro DIY posts like this, please! I'm going to give it a try this weekend!

posted by hula1985 on March 13th 2009 at 2:18pm
view hula1985's profile

yay!! i love this and i totally agree with hula1985

posted by wampler on March 13th 2009 at 5:27pm
view wampler's profile

ditto mrs yow, he was an incredible artist, worth investigating for sure!

posted by dolly on March 13th 2009 at 7:34pm
view dolly's profile