Homemade gift: DIY Felt Board

Do you remember playing with felt boards as a kid?  (Is that too old school?  Maybe kids nowadays play with fancy touch screens instead ... hrmm....)  Anyway, I remember using a felt board in school and LOVING it.   So I thought I'd try making a homemade felt board for Chuck. After consulting a couple of tutorials online, here's what I came up with:

Let's make a DIY Felt Board

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Now, in full disclosure, I wish I could say that Chuck loved it and played hours and hours with it while I took a nap on the couch.  Errrm.....  It didn't quite turn out that way.  He played with the car parts for a bit, but then seemed much more interested in rolling around real cars.

But I won't call this a craft fail just yet.  I'm hoping (cross your fingers!) that he'll grow to love the felt board as much as I did.  But if not, no big deal.  The entire thing only cost about 4 dollars to make because I already had most of the materials lying around the apartment.  Score!

Now if you have a felt-loving child in your life, you can try making your own felt board too!  (I bet it would make a great Christmas gift.)  Here's how I made mine:

Materials to make a DIY Felt Board:

• Large poster frame
• Felt (Background felt large enough to cover frame and Other pieces)
• Scissors (Fabric and normal)
• Paper
• Pen
• Mod Podge
• Sponge Brush

Directions to make a DIY Felt Board:

1.  Clean your work area.  Felt attracts stuff.  (I worked on the floor, so I swept it first.)

2.  Take out the back of your photo frame.  Discard the glass.  Place the back on your piece of felt and trace it.  Cut the rectangle out.

3.  Optional:  If your felt is a bit wrinkly, carefully iron it.  (I turned my iron to a lower setting and placed one of those protective ironing pressing pads over my felt before ironing it so I wouldn't melt or burn the felt.)

4.  Place your piece of felt directly over the photo frame back.  Make sure the sides all line up.  To help with the gluing, fold one side of the felt over the other.  Then, use your sponge brush and brush a bit of Mod Podge right next to the fold.   Press the fabric down over the glue.  Then, spread a little more Mod Podge next to your new fold and press the felt down again.  Keep repeating this procedure until one side is fully glued down.  Then, repeat the procedure with the other side.  

5.  Once the Mod Podge dries, put your board back into the frame.  That's it!

Now comes the fun part- making your felt pieces.  Doodle your designs onto paper.  Then, trace them onto felt and cut them out.  I chose to make a set of Christmas tree felt pieces and a set of car part pieces.

Happy crafting!

Make mini Christmas trees from Pipe Cleaners and Cardboard

Yesterday I shared how I made a miniature Christmas village out of plaster of paris.  Today I just wanted wanted to show how I quickly made these uber cute cardboard and pipe cleaner Christmas trees for my village.

(And if you like these trees, check out my tutorial for mini paint chip trees!

Cardboard Christmas Trees

Materials:

• Cardboard
• Cutting Mat
• Pattern (see below)
• Pen/pencil
• Exacto knife
• Scissors

Directions:

1. Print out the template to make one large and one small tree. 
2. Cut out the Christmas tree parts. 
3. Trace them onto cardboard.
4. Cut our your parts with an exacto knife.
5. Slide both pieces together and you've got yourself a mini tree!

Cardboard Christmas Tree Pattern

Pipe Cleaner Christmas Trees

Materials:

• Paper
• Pen
• Scissors
• Pipe cleaners (three per tree)
• Pom Poms
• Tacky glue

Directions:
1.  Doodle out a tree on a piece of paper.
2.  Bend a green pipe cleaner around your doodle.  Wrap both ends together to secure your tree.  Trim excess bits off.  Repeat this for all three tree shapes. 
3. Tie the three trees together by wrapping the tops and bottoms together with pipe cleaner.
4.  Gently separate the branches and glue small pom poms on with tacky glue.

That's it!  Happy crafting!  (Chuck was the artistic director for this photo shoot.  Can you tell?)

DIY Mini Plaster of Paris Christmas Village

I've always loved Christmas.  It's the time of year when twinkly lights decorate the dark nighttime sky.  And, it's the time of year that I'm reminded to hope because of God's great love for us.

Nowadays, Chuck and I love looking at the miniature Christmas village on display at our local craft store.  We always walk around oohing and ahhing over the little houses, ferris wheel, and tiny dog playing in snow.  It's magical.

So that's why I made us our own miniature Christmas village out of materials that we had lying around our apartment.

Let's Make a DIY Mini Christmas Village!

This post contains affiliate links.  Thank you for your support!

(Psst- Click here to see see how I made the pipe cleaner and cardboard trees.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hi everyone! I'm so sorry that posting has been a bit sporadic this week.  I've been feeling a bit down, so I just haven't had the heart to make cute stuff.  But not to worry though!  We're going to hang out with family this week, so hopefully things will perk up.

In the meantime, happy thanksgiving!  I know that I have a lot to be thankful for.... and one of those things is definitely you.  If you're reading this post right now, thank you.  Thank you for visiting and supporting this little corner of the internet.  You make blogging even more fun. :)   

On a side note, my friend Lisa from About Proximity posted some cute photos of kids showing things that they were thankful for.  (You can see her posts here and here.)  I asked Chuck to draw something that he was thankful for, and he drew this photo:

I then asked him what he drew and was surprised by his answer.  Instead of saying "Cars," or "Lightening McQueen" (which are the topics of most of our conversations nowadays), he said, "Mommy, me, daddy."  What?  Our kid was thankful for us?  That really warmed my heart.

And lastly, here's a short poem that I wrote last year.  Rereading it now, the same sentiments apply.

Happy Thanksgiving!  I'll see you on Monday (hopefully a couple of pounds heavier, yum!)

Poem Book by Leslie

DIY Double-sided Popsicle Stick Puzzles

I'm not sure when it happened... but Chuck went from being a "sparkly-pink-bracelet" wearing boy to being a "rough-and-tumble-loves-cars-and-trucks" kind of boy.

It happened so suddenly.  *Sigh*   (Strange, I'm humming "Sunrise, Sunset" right now...)

Anyway, with Chuck's new love for cars with eyes and Bob the Builder, I made him this set of popsicle stick puzzles. There are tons of tutorials out there for these things, but I used the one from Repeat Crafter Me because she made double-sided puzzles.  (Two puzzles for the price of one?  Love it!)

Here's a photo of one puzzle set.  It's got Bob the Builder on one side and Scoop on the other.  (Yup, I know the names of the machines.  I can't remember what day it is sometimes, but I can name most of the characters on that show by heart....weird.)

Let's get crafting!  Can we build it?  Yes, we can!  (Tee hee, I couldn't help it.)

Materials:

• Popsicle sticks
• Images (two of each)
• Sandwich bags
• Packing tape
• Clear tape or masking tape 
• Mod Podge*
• Sponge brush
• Cutting Mat
• Exacto knife
• Scissors
• Optional:  Markers / Crayons

 *Note:  Some people just use Elmers glue.  I had a ton of Sparkle Mod Podge, so I just used that.  That's why they came out rather.... sparkly.... Next time I'll just use normal Mod Podge.

Directions:

1.  Print and cut out two of each image.  One copy will go on your puzzle and another will go on your sandwich bag. (I don't own a colored printer, so I had to color my images in by hand.  I don't really recommend that because it was pretty time intensive...)

2.  Figure out how many Popsicle sticks your image will need.  Then, line up your sticks against something straight.  Tape the sticks together so that they'll stay together for step 3.


3.  Turn your sticks over so that the taped side is on the bottom.  If you'd like, label the sticks with numbers.  Use Mod Podge to glue your images onto the non-taped side of your Popsicle sticks.

4.  Let your images dry.  (I moved mine to parchment paper so that the Mod Podge wouldn't stick to my work area.)

5.  Once your Mod Podge dries, turn your puzzle over so the taped side is facing up.  Take off the tape and use an exacto knife to cut the sticks apart.  (Make sure to work on a cutting mat and cut from the back/ non-image side.)

6.  Optional:  To make a double-sided puzzle, tape the sticks together again, Mod Podge another image on the backs of your puzzle, and then cut the sticks apart again.

7.   Use packing tape to label sandwich bags with the images.  This will make clean-up easier and help the user to put together the puzzle.

Happy crafting!