Inspiration on Monday: Quiet Book

Inspiration on Monday is a two weekly link up hosted by Trish and encouraging us to share all things inspiring and creative! So far for this link up I've posted about things I'd like to make and ways to inspire yourself but not about anything I actually am making. Time to change that! 

Sam's birthday is coming up at the weekend (as is mine since it's on the same day. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to not spending my birthday in labour this year!) and I'm making him some name blocks in an 'I've been making them for six months, they will get done probably the night before' kind of way. I'm not posting about that today. Ben's birthday is in October. Obviously in my head this makes it perfectly logical for me to be making a Quiet Book for him! I'm really excited about both these things but I wanted to share the blocks once they're actually done whereas the quiet book I don't mind sharing while it's in progress!

So far I've made two pages and am in the middle of a third. The first (and my current favourite) is from a template I found online and which you can also get hold of here. You will notice that her sewing is much straighter than mine and her finger puppets not only have eyes but she also has a duck. Eventually mine will have eyes and I will make a duck. Good things come to those who wait. Also all my sewing is done by hand, whereas all hers was done by machine. I am still afraid of my machine. 

With the doors shut...

Ta-dah!

The animals are finger puppets and the idea is that the kid/s can use the sunny grass page to play with the animals.They're also pretty cute and super simple to make. 

My second page was from a template from the same blog and is designed to help little ones with their buttoning practice. The pot has an open top so you can store the flowers in there once they're off. 

The colours are much better in real life, this is literally the worst photo I've ever taken I think. If anyone has any inspiring photography tips they'd like to share I'd love to hear them! The template for this page is here. 

The third page which is currently in progress is pretty cool and is for colour matching. Ben's just getting to the point where occassionally he'll point out colours to me or pass me something and tell me what colour it is. He seems to be picking stuff up really well without me actively 'teaching' him anything so I'm trying to keep up the pattern of incorporating things into play and helping him learn that way. 

As you'll see there are two balloons, each with a little velcro dot on them. There will be three or four other colours and each balloon will be attached to the elephant with a little ribbon string. Also the elephant is going to have an ear and an eye eventually. I really love this page. There isn't a template for it (I made my own) but the idea was entirely borrowed from this site.

Because I have a huge box of felt from when I was running my (currently on hiatus) craft business making kids toys I have a few more pages planned to use it up. As always Pinterest is so overly inspiring that I'm pretty sure I'll be making Sam one for Christmas as well!

The other pages I plan on adding (in case you're interested) are:

The ladybug page from Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows

The car page from Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows

The Mr & Mrs Potato Head page from Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows

The sock matching page from Imagine Our Life

The alphabet page from And Next Comes L

Possibly a shape matching page like this one

Possibly the fishing page from Pops and Podge

Aaaaand possibly this amaznig counting Hungry Caterpillar page from Imagine Our Life

My favourite thing about this project is that felt is so easy to work with and because I'm hand sewing the whole thing I can just sit down and get it done. I've not even been working on it a week yet and I've already achieved so much, I'm pretty proud of myself! 

What are you working on at the moment? Have you ever made a quiet book?