This is my first post ever so please forgive any un-blogger-like mistakes you may find! :)
I discovered about quiet books about 6 months ago and decided to make one for my son E for his first birthday. So I have been spending most of my free time on Pinterest getting some inspiration for the design of the book and ended up running out of time! As it turned out, one week before his birthday, I still had not started... still busy thinking about how to make the perfect quiet book!
Then I realized there was no way I could ever finish a book given the amount of time I had left so I decided to start with something simpler than a book, just an initiation to felt work and opted for a little toddler Christmas tree.
Anyway, after that it was my best friend's daughter's third birthday and I ended up making my first quiet book for her. And I realized it was A LOT of work! A lot more than I thought. And finally decided I need to think of something simple for E's Christmas gift and I can always keep on making quiet books and improve my techniques.
So finally, I started working on a very simple quiet book based on the story of Noah (I'd rather call it a play set or felt activity set instead of a quiet book since it only looks like a playmat). I got my inspiration from this cute play set http://www.amazon.ca/Bright-handmade-designer-children-Kolobok/dp/B0145PRKFS/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1451455845&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=designer+soft+toy+tablet and a few other Noah felt boards.
Again I missed my deadline this time and the Christmas gift was only finished 5 days later! The culprit? It was still a lot more work than I thought. But it is finally done and although I am not very happy with the finish, E loves it! He loves undoing the rainbow, handing me the pieces and putting them back on, whichever way he wants. And when we had to get the animals into the boat, he also removed the clouds and insisted on putting them in the boat. It will take him some time before he will know how to properly play with it but he is enjoying it and that's what matters.
So here is the final product.
The cover: my eyesight is not very good so I used a supposedly washable marker to trace the letters but after the first wash it did not go away completely. Hope I will have better luck later on. I still have to work on putting the zipper more professionally too!
Before the flood: The sky elements are attached with Velcro and can be removed and interchanged. The mat itself does not take much time and was relatively easy, although the final assembly to the cover was quite tricky and I am still trying to figure out how it can be improved next time.
E loves animals - his favorite being the lion - I had to have a lion then I just added other safari and jungle animals and I thought the panda and kangaroo were so cute so I added them. And just so he won't forget where he comes from, I had to add Madagascar's signature animal - the lemur (here ringtail lemur, my favorite!). Making the animals was the most time consuming given all the details and how small they were ( each animal took 1 to 3h!) but it was fun! I like how the lion turned out :)
Building the boat:
I wanted to include as much activities as I could so I opted for the boat building! A very basic one that is.
The rain and the flood:
The clouds contain "raindrops". I was trying to make it as toddler-safe as possible and did not want to use beads so instead I just used ribbons. And fabrics pulled over and attached with Velcro for the flood. this was the easiest way I found but certainly not the best!
After the flood, baby can build the rainbow!
And finally all the removable pieces!
I am thinking of having a series on Bible stories, and will probably start with The story of Creation next but I still have no idea on how to make it fun and educative at the same time, and requiring less work...is that even possible? :-)
Until next time again! And wish you all a blessed year 2016!
