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Children's Felt Board

I came up with this felt board as a cheap Christmas gift to give my son's friend, J. Her mom will be growing her first garden next year and I thought it would be a lot of fun to let J practice her gardening skills before spring arrives.

This project took me about 2 evenings to complete and cost a mere $4CDN to make. Best of all, it's a wonderfully interactive gift that fosters a child's imagination!

The Planning
Before you start making this gift, there is some planning to be done.

The more 'action' your board has, the better. By 'action' I mean that your board should allow the child to act something out or do something with the pieces. My gardening themed board allows my son's friend to plant and water her seeds and then watch her flowers grow. The sun can come out one day, or it can be cloudy. Sometimes a bird even flies overhead!

Before you start cutting out the pieces, do a rough sketch on a piece of paper to figure out how your felt board will look once it's done. Doing this bit of planning at the beginning will help keep you focused and motivated!

The Materials

You'll need:

Felt
Permanent Marker
Scissors
Tacky Craft Glue
Embellishments (needle and thread, googly eyes, sparkles, whatever you need to give your felt board a little something more)

The Making

1. Choose a large piece of felt to be the background piece of your board and glue on any stationary pieces. I glued a piece of black felt onto my board as a pocket so that seeds could be 'planted' in the ground to grow.

2. Cut out a piece of cardboard to the same size as your background. Glue the background onto the cardboard.

3. Use a felt marker to make an outline of your pieces and carefully cut them out. Try to cut out the pieces on the inside of the marker so that you don't have any marker lines showing.

Adding Some Special Touches

Now here comes the part when you make this project a little more special! Embellish the felt pieces with glitter, some pretty stitching or trim.

Simply put, the more detail you add to your felt pieces, the better your board will look. I found this really helped add quality to my project and made it go from a homemade gift to a handmade gift.

The Pocket
Here's another way to bring this project from drab to fab - a storage pocket at the back!

1. Glue a large piece of felt onto the back of your cardboard.

2. Cut out a smaller square of felt. This will be the pocket in which you will store all the felt pieces. Cut a deep 'v' into the top and finish all four sides with a blanket stitch.

3. Glue three sides of your pocket down, leaving the top side (the part that has the 'v' cut out of it) unglued.

4. Cut out the top flap of your pocket. It should be as wide as your pocket and long enough so that it just covers the 'v' cutout in your pocket. Finish the edges of the flap with a blanket stitch.

5. Next, glue the flap down to the back of your felt board, just above the pocket.

6. To finish your felt board, glue a small strip of felt around the sides to hide the cardboard and any raw edges.

And voila! You now have a felt board that the kids will love to play with all year round!

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