Monday, July 6, 2009

Travel Flannel Board

I first need to acknowledge MaryAnne@thriftycraftmama for the inspiration for this flannel board (so creative!). I saw her posts on flannel boards and knew that my 4 year old would love to make her train and truck. I wanted to make something that would be a bit more portable and sturdy for traveling, so I came up with a simple flannel board that can fit inside a ziploc baggie, along with lots of felt shapes to create more pictures.


I first cut a piece of cardboard to the size I wanted, a few inches smaller than a gallon ziploc bag. I then cut two pieces of blue felt, one dark, one light about 1 1/2 inches wider and taller than my cardboard. I pinked the edges (mainly to distract from the fact that I cannot cut a straight line...) and pinned the felt together along the edges of the cardboard.


I then sewed along the edge, using a zipper foot, so I could get as close as possible to the cardboard.


I cut the shapes needed from MaryAnn's diagrams, then added some larger shapes, rectangles in different sizes, and some small pipe cleaners and wiggle eyes. I was thinking my kids could make robots or simple animals with the extra pieces. I hot glued a bit of the soft sided velcro to the back of the wiggle eyes to help them stay put a bit better, but gluing some felt on the back would have been better, now that I'm thinking about it. The pipe cleaners seem to "stick" fairly well to the board, too.

Simple and quick and done!

2 comments:

  1. I love this idea! And I love that it all fits in a ziploc bag!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Perfect!! I needed this. I made Caleb a felt board but was at a loss for ideas on what he could put on it. I cut out pictures from the Friend and glued them on cardboard and felt but they don't stick for long. I think the cardboard is too heavy. I almost broke down and bought one of the those on-line kits. Caleb would love creating things out of shapes so much more! OK. Where my felt?

    ReplyDelete