Easy decorative nursery mobile

So this project has taken me far longer than I had hoped to get started.

But I'm determined to make my own nursery mobile for decor and for little Lottie's enjoyment. 

I've been browsing ideas for months and bookmarking them but have never really got round to grabbing all the materials and deciding upon a design.

Sometimes I see these beautiful ideas online and get put off at my capabilities to put something together. No one likes bringing all their goodies home from the craft store only to find their idea doesn't work or looks a bit naff in reality. 

For this reason I decided to keep this one simple (and I mean super simple). This mobile could be put together with some spare ribbons (if you have any) or from ribbons obtained from an arts/crafts exchange if you want to keep costs to a minimum. You really just need an embroidery hoop and off you go. No sewing, gluing or complicated piecing together.

All you need to do is measure your ribbons out evenly and then loosely tie them onto the embroidery hoop. 

I wanted to make Lottie's mobile in keeping with her nursery theme which is pink and gold so chose these colours for my ribbons. 

To finish off the mobile you will need to  tie 2 pieces of cord/twine to hang it and suspend from a ceiling hook.

What I like about the mobile is that it could quite easily remain as part of the room decor as Lottie gets a little older, it adds a splash of colour to what is effectively our box room and is a simple but effective way of doing so.

How did you decorate your little one's nursery? Did you make any features yourself and did it take you as long as me to get round to it? X

The Siblings Project

Today we're joining up with a new linky that is 'the siblings project' from dearbeautifuboy.com. You can read here what the sibling project is all about but in a nutshell it hopes to capture how growing up with a sibling can shape your childhood by creating those unique shared lifelong memories together.

What I love about this linky is that it encourages us to cherish these moments. 

As Lottie has gotten older we can really see the beautiful bond our two have together particularly being close in age. I'll be honest we we're originally a little apprehensive about a small age gap but there has been no need to be, they have rapidly become as thick as thieves! 

We find it wonderful watching them enjoy things together and sharing things they do. Even at such a young age Oscar and Lottie enjoy meal times together, shared bubble baths, natter to one another and play. Only this evening were they chasing after each other on all fours giggling ( I fear this phase won't last long as our baby girl is keen to be upright) 

Oscar likes to cuddle his little sister, have story times together and they attend baby signing class once a week for a joint activity which they both adore.

Part of the sibling project is to post an image to treasure such moments and I'll be honest it's hard to whittle them down to a single picture. So here are a trio of images I narrowed it down to. These aren't staged photographs, they are simply everyday life, they choose to cuddle, they choose to hold hands, they choose to smile. It's beautiful to see that two babies you have an overwhelming love for can too genuinely have love for one another at such a tender age. It safe to say we love them both to the moon and back.

Lalalab.

Hello and a very happy new year to all my lovely readers. I thought we'd start off the new year with a blog milestone here at bebebearcubs with our very first collaboration. This is with the photo based app Lalalab (previously known as Polagram)

Lalalab kindly gave us the chance to review one of the fabulous products in their range, the 21'' x 21'' photo book.

What greater way to cherish your snapshots from the year gone by than a book brimming with all your fun filled memories.

There are so many choices out there for photo books and photo gifts nowadays and the online market is briming with them.

So here's why Lalalab was our choice.

-Quality

I have ordered prints from Lalalab before and have been immensely impressed with the quality. You can see some examples of the prints we recieved and what we did with them here. From a mobile app I'll be honest I was naturally a bit apprehensive but there was no need to be. Their prints are great quality and on a fabulous Fujifilm Archive Supreme gloss paper. They are far superior to any prints I have collected from high street retailers, we were pleasantly surprised.

-Convenience

All your photos are at your fingertips. Being an app on your mobile phone Lalalab can gain access to your photostream (with your permission) and off you go! Just select the images you want printed, the product you wish to purchase and click to order. No faffing around on the PC, no rummaging around for memory cards, everything you need to create a wonderful keepsake of your images is there in your hand. I have a Fuji  mirrorless camera for my photography too so I simply use wifi connectivity to ping these over to my mobile if I wish to include some higher quality jpgs (you're not just restricted to mobile images)

-Fresh, modern and fun.

Lalalab are slightly different to your usual photo products because they offer the retro style Polaroid look to their product range which is very on trend right now. Getting your photos printed in polastyle gives them a fun appeal and there are heaps of creative ideas of what to do with your Polaroids on Pinterest. The app also ties in nicely with Instagram and the square style photo streams which are really clean and fresh. As a blogger I adore the photography style look and layouts online and these are reflected nicely in the photo books. Your photo book cover can effectively look very much alike a hard copy of your Instagram feed at a glance and inside are the larger images (still available in the cute square shape) to enjoy , it's a great way to treasure these as a hard copy.

So Lalalab were happy for us to give their photo book a test run. We had our first family holiday as a four to Portugal recently so used our photo book to capture all our adventures.

The photo books start at the  base price of £19.90 and you can choose from 26 images to fill it. You can add further images if you wish to (an additional 14, these cost 79p each) giving your photo book a total of 40 pictures.

The front cover is a collage of some of your images which can be shuffled to suit .

The app gives an option to add a title to each page but we choose to keep it plain, there is also an 'effects' function to edit and adjust your images if you so wish to. Many of our images already had a vintage film applied as that's the look we wanted so we also didn't use this functionality. It's nice to have it as an option though especially if you are feeling creative.

In summary our Lalalab photo book is unique, modern and fun. The pages are more of a matte than a gloss like the Polaroid prints and the focus is most certainly on images rather than reams of text (if you want your photo book to have a written story or documented descriptions then this probably isn't for you on this occasion) but you can add titles to each page if you wish to. The photo books have a good quality hardback cover and nice chic white background. I think they'd work really well at capturing an event like birthdays, an engagement, summer adventures or even just a really novel way to store your Instagram or mobile phone snaps as a hard copy to enjoy flicking through. 

There are definitely more comprehensive photo book sites out there with more choice of image layouts, greater customisation and different album sizes but the Lalalab app isn't pretending to be another one of these. It's grasped back the simplicity of uploading your digital files straight from your mobile phone and creating a simple but fun and fresh photo book to cherish these. 

The photo book pictured was given to us for review purposes. All feedback is our own opinion and is a true and honest reflection having used the app and received said product. In return we are happy for Lalalab to use our comments or photographs for press release or social media purposes.