Quiet Book!

I've finally finished the quiet book I made for my son! It was an intense labor of love and I know I spent way more time on it than I should have, but I am really happy with the results. It is completely hand stitched, except for a tiny bit on the eskimo page.

When I started the book I knew little about felt. I started out using crafting felt and used that to make the eskimo page. Somewhere along the way I discovered wool blended felt and fell in love. The quality of the wool blend is far above the craft felt. My son has been playing with his book for two weeks and you can already tell that the wool blend felt is going to last much longer and look better than the craft felt.

PAGE 1

I was a little uncertain when I started out the quiet book, so I looked to other blogs for inspiration. My first page was inspired by Imagine our Life. After I finished this page I felt more comfortable coming up with all of my own ideas, but it was definitely a lot of work!

PAGE 2-3 Pirates, buried treasure, and sea monsters! 

PAGE 4-5 Dinosaur puzzle and build animal faces

Pages 6-7 Pet Shop! I apparently didn't take a picture of the two pages together, but you get the idea. All the animals and pet food on the shelf are removable. 

Page 8 Home sweet home and dress up time! Two sets of clothes int the closet on little removable hangers.

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Playhouse makeover!

After seeing a number of adorable playhouse makeovers I really wanted to do one for my son. We found a suitable one on craigslist and my husband kindly made two trips to disassemble it and bring home all the pieces. It was bright pink. I'm not a big fan of pink, even for girls, so I was off to walmart to find some paint. I'm kind of a big nerd. My dream playhouse would a hobbit hole big enough to play in. Unfortunately that is an dream unlikely to ever be realized, so I tried to incorporate some fantasy elements into the playhouse. I'm quite happy with the way it turned out.

This was definitely a learning process. There are many things I would do differently if I were to do it again. It took me about a month to finish all of the painting. This had a lot to do with the fact that I was taking medication at the time that made me feel quite ill.

I recommend painting the playhouse at quickly as possible. I was constantly having to clean the playhouse every time I wanted to put on a little more paint, and it became a huge chore.

I used Krylon Fusion paint because I read it was a good option for this type of project. I ended up spending a fair amount of money on paint and have already noticed several small areas where the paint has started to chip. Oh well, too late now, I guess I'll just have to touch it up every now and then.

Also, if you are handier than I am, completely disassemble the playhouse before you paint it. I couldn't figure out how to take some of the pieces apart so I ended up having to cover them up while I used different colors of paint. This was a HUGE pain.

All and all I'm glad I did it.

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Starting a crafting blog.

I'm pretty new to the blogging world, but I love to craft and share ideas. I get a lot of ideas by seeing what other people have made, so I thought I'd share my ideas with anyone who is interested!
Let me start off by saying that I am a perfectionist; that doesn't mean that what I make is perfect, it mainly means that I will spend hours, days, month, or years on certain projects to get them the way I want them.
I have always loved crafting and learning how to do new things. I am self taught, and spend many hours scouring the internet for ideas and 'how to' explanations of all kinds. Mainly I spend my time hand sewing because it is very easy to pick up or put down when I have a few spare moments.  
Right now I've got several projects in the works. The one I am most eager to finish is a quiet book for my 2 1/2 year old son. I've been working on it for quite a long time and have hand sewn almost all of it. I've never worked with felt before so it was definitely a learning experience, but I've found that I absolutely love it! I recently finished the pages and am now busy trying to put together the cover.
So far the cover has been my biggest challenge. I wanted a cover that had a zipper so that none of the small removal pieces would fall out. I also wanted it to be a bit more sturdy than the pages inside. I looked around a lot online but didn't find anything I loved so I decided to design my own cover. I'm still not entirely sure how it will turn out (I tend to just design as I go), but here is a preview of the front cover. More pictures to come soon!

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