Lay out three drinking straws on any flat surface, making sure that they are horizontally placed and evenly spaced. Just as a building needs scaffolding, your hanging mobile needs a basic architectural structure. The straws act as your mobile's scaffolding.
Attach one paper clip to the middle of each straw.
Make a paper clip chain coming off of each middle paper clip. You can make the chains as long as you'd like.
Connect the paper clip chains so that every straw is connected to every other straw by at least one strand of paper clips. At the bottom of your mobile, you will be left with paperclips that are part of the paper clip chains but are unattached to straws. These are an important component of your mobile.
Determine your mobile's purpose. You have just built the base structure for the mobile, but your creativity and clarity of purpose will help to determine just how novel your mobile is. Use a search engine to look up pictures of different mobiles if you are decorating your house. Write down some of the images in a book if you are trying to make your mobile a reflection of that book. Gather your favorite snapshots and magazine pictures or simply cut out shapes from construction paper. The more time you spend on this step, the more unique your mobile will be.
Attach images to the paper clips at the bottom of the mobile. In other words, simply clip your photographs or cutouts to the lowest paper clips on your mobile structure. The beauty of the paper clip method is that you can switch around images if you are unsatisfied with them, and you can balance your mobile by moving the paper clips along the straws.
Display your mobile. Once you have created your basic mobile, you can keep changing the cutouts on the mobile based on the feedback from your friends, family or teachers.