Laume's Studio

I kept meaning to show you one homemade gift I managed to finish in time for the holidays. Well, I finished it by the time Joli showed up for New Year's and opened her Yule gifts. It's an old fashioned felt board. Do you guys remember those? And the smaller version of the same play idea - those plastic cling sets about the size of a board game you could buy in a box? I loved those things when I was a kid. I particularly remember I had a Wendy the Weather Girl one.

I covered a bulletin board with felt (which ended up being a lot easier than I thought it was gonna be - whew) and then started cutting out shapes and figures. The only felt I could find in town (remember we were snowed in) was a brand made out of recycled plastic. Not very natural but cool in an ecological way. My main concern was, were the shapes gonna stick to each other like the felt I remember from my childhood?


As you can see, they did stick! And Joli really liked it. She got distracted from her other gifts for quite a long while to play with it until Lisa, who wanted her to finish up so she could open some of her own gifts, encouraged her to get back to unwrapping things.

Here's another photo that shows a few of the more complex shapes I made. There were more but they were in a little box. I couldn't resist making the mushroom and the snowman, although I wondered if Joli would be able to resist picking the white dots off the mushroom (like she picked the white dot marshmallows off her birthday "mushroom" cupcakes) or the black "coal" off the snowman. She couldn't resist, but it didn't really matter as the glue hadn't worked well anyway and they were falling off on their own. Lisa made them disappear until she's a wee bit older.

Lisa is going to hang it on the wall of her bedroom (or maybe her little craft area in the living room?) I hope it continues to hold her attention at home. If so, I'll make her some more figures for it.