Quiet Book / Travel Pillow

You might guess by the title that we are taking a trip soon!  I am so excited to visit my folks in Texas, but a little wary of how Peanut will travel now that he is more of a big kid.  A 3 hour plane ride is a long time to be still for a little boy who spends most days chasing his puppy and playing with his hockey stick!  So I decided that along with some other quiet toys, dvd's from my sister in law (thanks Missi!), and PLENTY o' SNACKS, I would make my boy a quiet book.  He is 13 months old and loves flip books and taking things out and putting things in, but not quite ready for coloring books (I've tried) so I wanted to be creative yet practical with this project.
My requirements were:
The book must be interactive and pack alot of activities into each page
There should be no parts that can fall or get lost (I had to ammend this rule on one page, but I think we'll be ok)
The pages must be able to be taken out and the book should be able to be added to in the future. (I love that the pages can be taken out so in the future if we have 2 kids they can each pick a page and work on them at the same time!)
I googled images of quiet books, searched them on pinterest, and just thought about what my little one likes best.  The travel pillow addition was a happy accident.  The whole book is made from thrift store felt, along with a few fasteners and some old clothes.  I had some very soft fleece and thought that maybe a cover would be good to keep it clean.  I was going to do a zipper and handles, but quite frankly I was tired and that just seemed a bit much. I just decided on a simple bag and when I folded the fleece over the book to measure it I realized it made a great little pillow!  The material is thick and the metal rings are inside the pages so they cannot be felt at all!  So without further ado:

 Travel Pillow

 Matching balloons (when you use felt you only have to use the rough side of velcro to stick) and a ribbon to tie.  All the balloon strings are long enough to reach the "wrong" colors to mix and match.

 Mr. Potato Head with a zippered suitcase for his parts.  I didn't attach the parts with string because I knew it would get tangled, but the felt cutouts are no biggie to replace if we lose a few!

The inspiration for this page came from a picture of a fishtank page with fish that could be slid along a string.

 Button flowers.  You can't see in the picture, but each flower is attached by a thread so it will not get lost.  The threads are long enough to reach any button on the page.

 This page was entirely my own idea and I am so happy with the way it turned out.  Peanut loves "Itsy Bitsy Spider" so I knew that we should have a page in it's honor.  The pipes are unattached on the side closest to spine so spider can sneak into them and also the grass is a pocket.  The sun also hides in a pocket until it's ready to come out.

 

The glove page is probably my least favorite because I just don't think it's as cute as the others.  However, this has no bearing on how Peanut will like it, and I suspect he will enjoy putting on the gloves and also playing peekaboo with the cat face.  There is also a removable (velcro) purple hand under the top glove.

I love these colors together.  Just more fasteners and bows to work with.  I had not attached the overalls hooks before and bent one of the buttons in the process slightly, but it works fine.

Ok, this is my "aesthetic" favorite...I really thought that this page would be tons of work, but I knew it was a must.  I love the barnyard theme and we are working on animal sounds (right now all the animals make a monkey sound, smile).  I wanted to include finger puppets as well, but couldn't figure out where to store them.  I really didn't want to do a whole other page, but wanted them to travel in the book somehow.  So finally I realized that if I left the roof of the barn un-sewn I could use it as a storage pocket.  I put velcro on to secure it when shut.  It ended up being a quick, easy page and Im glad I didn't talk myself out of it!

My finger puppets are rather amateurish, but it was my first time and as I said before I was running out of steam so I am proud that I got a handful done.  They are sewn around the edges and I also used hot glue for some of the facial features.
  So there it is.  I am not kidding myself into thinking that this book will entertain a 13 month old for an entire 3 hours, but I hope it will help.  And truly I think it is the most fun I have ever had sewing.  I love the combination of creativity and construction and how the pages felt (pardon the pun) like mini projects.
Hope this inspires you to make the most of some quiet time...if you have any!  Sew long. :-)

Subway Sign

Ok, so technically this is not a sewing project, but it falls right into the category of my "diy, forge ahead with reckless abandon, re-purposing materials, learn from my mistakes" kind of craft I like to share on this blog.  In the interest of giving credit where credit is due, I must mention that I got the basic layout from a blog entitled "The Winthrop Chronicles."  I used a different method however.  It was a tutorial on printing the stats on paper and gluing them to wood, whereas I chose to hand paint mine. So here is my finished "Subway" sign with my son's stats on it.

Now let me tell you exactly how I did it, what materials I used, and what I would do differently if I did it again.  Things I like...everything but the 6 lbs 12 oz.  I may even repaint it.  I think it looks like the odd man out...too bubbly or something.  I would ( and might) change it to more of a stencil or boxy font.
Here is my material list:
1. Old piece of board left over from garage shelves
2. Old house paints
3. brushes from thrift store
4. paper plates for "palettes"
5. computer and printer
Here is my wood with the base coat on.  It is our hallway paint.

Now for the nitty gritty how-to:  As with many of my projects, I didn't really have a game plan.  Just knew what I wanted the finished project to look like and thought about how I might do it.  I knew I would use printed words with different fonts and my first idea was to cut out stencils.  Here's how that went:

Oh my gosh, cutting out the numbers was VERY tedious and then it just left messy painting...ok, on to a new method.  I had read about this method before on a blog aptly titled "The Perfect Letter" and it works pretty well.  I say "pretty well" because you still need a very steady hand if you want perfection.  Thank God I don't have a need for the latter because I sure as heck don't have the first!  Anywho... This method involves taping the printed words/numbers to the wood and tracing with lots of pressure to leave an indentation to guide your painting.  The indentation was so light it would not photograph.  I recommend working under a good light when using this method.

I wasn't about to try to trace all the little details in the 8,3, and 5, so I just did the outline and painted messy inside.  Another idea is to sand paper the edges to create a distressed look.  I'm not into that style as much but if you are that's a good way to achieve it.

So here it is again.. a little leftover wood, some house paint, some mistakes, some patience, and a lot of wonderful memories of the exact moment that this sign commemorates.