Fun With Felt

After participating in a fun felt board activity at our local library story time, I asked my mom if we could borrow the felt pieces that she made for us when we were younger...

aren't these mom & dad cut-outs just adorable? 
Yeah, my cute-as-can-be-mom hand-made them! They still make me smile. :)

Benjamin loves them as well, so my parents also gifted us a couple of these Creatology Felt Activity sets from Michaels. They are about $7.99/set and come with A LOT of felt cut-outs. The only problem is that the board they come with are pretty small, so I decided to buy felt fabric (cut by the roll) and make some larger felt boards.

My husband had the idea to do this with foam core boards. He bought us 3 ($4.99 a piece at Hobby Lobby) and then I took them to JoAnns Fabric so that I would know how much felt to buy to cover them. I originally wanted each board in a different color, but after I found out that you have to buy it doubled up (it runs long vertically), then I decided to just do green and blue. From one cut (width of my foam boards + 2" border around all the sides) I was able to cover 2 boards in green. With my second cut in blue, I covered my last board and plan to make a cape for Benjamin out of the remains. 

To cover, we simply attached it on the back with clear packaging tape. I thought about taking pics to document each step, but it's seriously so easy that I think this above pic is pretty self-explanatory. The one tip that's important to keep in mind is to pull it tight (really tight!) to prevent wrinkles and puckering on the display side.

And voila! Here you have 3 large felt boards to make up stories with, learn shapes (we plan to make shape cut-outs from felt sheets (like $1.00/ sheet at Michaels), and display other fun things. This was a super easy project and done fairly inexpensively.