Thursday, December 29, 2011

Homemade Christmas Gift #1

We always do a gift exchange with Josh's siblings and this year we had Becky and Hema's family. Becky said they could use some quiet activities to keep their young kids entertained during church, so I made a couple things...
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(1) First of all, I made a "Dry-Erase Quiet Book" using my friend Autie's awesome tutorial that you can find HERE . I don't have a picture of it, but I printed off lots of coloring sheets and activity pages from the online Friend Magazine, put them in a binder in heavy-duty sheet protectors, and then added a pack of dry-erase crayons. You can color on the pages and then just wipe it off clean for next time.
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(2) Then I made some really simple felt activities. The background for each one is 6 inches by 9 inches (a half sheet of felt). The background pieces are glued down, but the other pieces can be moved around. (That's probably obvious).
Butterflies
Fish Pond
Christmas Tree
Flower Garden
Autumn Leaves
Dinner Plate
Rainbow
Jack-O-Lantern
Faces
Ice Cream Cones
Names
(I included the names of all the family members)
The pieces for each set were put in super fancy snack-size bags
And all the pieces and backgrounds were put in a big gallon-size ziploc. And that's that. I usually don't make homemade gifts, but these were fun projects to put together!
Bryn was a little sad that we gave the felt activities away, so I'm working on making a set for her!

23 comments:

  1. We LOVE these so much! I can't wait for Sunday when my kids will be busily crating cute little pictures out of felt or coloring nicely and being reverent all through Sacrament meeting! Thanks million! They are amazing!

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  2. Wow, these are adorable! Great job!!

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  3. Those are so cute! I love all of them. You are very creative!

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  4. You are right! Why do I need to make a book?!

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  5. These are great are there any printable cutouts for a pattern for the games...

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  6. These are awesome! Great ideas.
    As a teacher, and mom of little kids, I'm going to whip some of these up and put them to really good use!
    We also travel a lot and they'd be great for portable games (on airplanes and waiting around) because they're light and small and really if you did lose a piece or something you can just make it again.
    Thanks for sharing!

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  7. Found this on Pinterest! I love it, I'm so doing this for my girls! Thanks for the inspiration.

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  8. These are adorable. Thank you so much for sharing! I was wondering what type of glue you used?

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  9. So much inspiration here! Thanks for sharing. I"m breaking out the felt and scissors pronto!

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  10. Hot glue gunned or what kind of glue did you use?

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  11. This is the cutest idea! Maybe now my little one will sit through church!

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  12. I used these for inspiration and am making some of these and also some more "boy" ones for my little guy - like dirt & bugs. :) yours look fantastic.

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  13. Very cute! I think I will still put the background in a book and fix pockets to hold the pieces for each page. thanks for the ideas!

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  14. Great! i really impressed with your hand made Christmas Gifts thanks

    kerstpaketten

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  15. THANK YOU!! These are darling!! I just made up a few with some scrap felt that I had from thrift store finds. I had to make some alterations, based on what colors I had, like a grandma/grandpa face with changable parts....no brown or other regular hair parts--but I have to say Grandma & Grandpa were never so much fun! :)

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  16. Hi Laura,

    I'm an editorial assistant at Parents working on a story about DIY busy bags. Our editors loved the felt scene activity on your blog (http://happyhawkins.blogspot.jp/2011/12/homemade-christmas-gift-1.html), and I'm hoping you can give me some more information about it, so that we might be able to include it in the story. First, I'd like to make sure that this was your original idea. Second, we'd like to get your permission to recreate your idea for Parents magazine. If you agree and your idea is chosen for the piece, we will recreate the craft, photograph it in our NYC studio, and you and your blog will receive a credit on the page. If you're up for it, I will send you more information.

    Thanks!
    Rheanna

    Rheanna O'Neil Bellomo
    Editorial Assistant | Parents Magazine
    805 Third Avenue 24th Floor | NY, NY 10022
    Phone 212.499.2049 | Fax 212.499.2083
    rheanna.bellomo@meredith.com

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  17. This is really adorable, Im sure kids will love this, kids do really love doing art works.

    || Send Flowers and Gifts to Philippines ||

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  18. Great idea. This is way easier than carrying around the big quiet book. And I like that some of these are geared towards preschool age (ish) kids and not just toddlers

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  19. I am going to make some of these for my neice for Christmas! She'll be 15 months then. First of all, I absolutely LOVE that these are no-sew. Now, I know I have many talents, but sewing is NOT one of them-and I'm ok with that! Thank you for sharing your ideas (and validating that the concept does indeed work and the end result is SUPER cute)!

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  20. These are so great! I've been looking for ideas to keep my 4 year old busy on an upcoming road trip - my mom made him a wonderful quiet book, but so much of it has been lost or broken, and now with a 15 month old in the mix, I don't want to put hundreds of hours into making something that will meet the same fate - these seem like a perfect mix!

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  21. You did such a lovely job choosing concepts and colors. Nice work cutting them out, very neat!

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  22. Christmas is in the air! Many are giving gifts to loved ones. And this is perfect!

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