Andrea's Baby Board Book

My baby girl Andrea is into babies recently. She likes watching babies on TV... she likes looking at baby pictures... and she gets all giggly and happy when she sees one around. For the past few weeks, I collected all the birth announcements and first birthday invitations we have at the house and gave them to her to play with. It has become her evening ritual to grab the stack of photos and look at them before bed time. Since the cards and pictures were getting all wrinkled and torn... I decided to put them all in a book that's safe for Andrea to play with. So I made her a board book using cardboard and felt.

For this project I used:

1) a stack of baby pictures: birth announcements, invitations, pictures

2) 5 pieces of illustration board, cut into 6" x 6" squares.

3) 10 pieces of felt in different colors cut into approximately 7" x 7.5"

The felt has to be bigger than your cardboard for seam allowance and one side need to have a wider allowance.

4) Glue gun
5) sewing machine
6) thread
7) different pieces of trim/items you can use to decorate the pages.

The first step is to arrange the felt squares into how I wanted the colors arranged from cover page to the back page. Step 2... decorate each page.It's like scrap booking (which I'm not very good at). Here's the thing... the first few pages I made were nice... I had several ideas. But for the last pages.. I kinda ran out of ideas so I just glued the pictures and glued a few items... I will probably add more to those pages when I find time.  Make sure to put a wider allowance on one side... this is where each page will be glued to the other pages.

After each page is decorated... put 2 pieces of felt squares together and sew 3 sides together. Slip the cardboard on the open side and then sew shut. You should have 5 pieces of cardboard pages covered in felt. Using the glue gun, attach each page to each where the allowance is wider. Since some of the stuff I glued on some pages were bulky... I had to insert a thin strip of cardboard between each page.

Here's my finished book:

The cover :)

Page 1 and 2

On Page 1: A disc which my husband got when he opened up a busted hard drive from an old PC, turned into a 'mirror' flower with a butterfly applique.

On Page 2: A picture of Andrea with a felt flower which resembles the flower print on the blanket on the photo.

Page 3 and 4

On Page 3: One of the last pages I decorated... A cutout of a cat (yes, that is a cat!) which I free handed. I used plastic eyes and drew the mouth and whiskers.

On Page 4: A picture from cousin Skylar's birth announcement, decorated with felt hearts.

Page 5 and 6

On Page 5, a picture from a friend's daughter's baptism invitation. This is the part where I ran out of ideas... I just glued one flower-shaped button to give Andrea something to play with on this page. I plan to add more to this page soon.

On Page 6, a picture of cousin Rizal from his birth announcement card, decorated with polka dots which match part of the color scheme of the card.

Page 7 and 8

On Page 7, a picture of cousin Caleb on his first birthday invite. I glued 3 charms shaped like little boys.

On Page 8, 2 pockets sewn onto the felt each pocket contains a picture of Andrea as a little baby attached to cardboard and secured with ribbons glued to the inside of the pocket(so she can't pull them out), a felt caterpillar with plastic eyes, and a felt flower.

Here's a closer look at the photo inside the pocket... she was so small then! Only a few days old

Andrea loves playing with her new book and the pictures will last a little longer since they won't get wrinkled every time she grabs them.

I linked up to the following sites:

Craft Couture | Sew Can Do | Today's Creative Blog | Lady Bug Blessings | Tea Rose Home | Sew Much Ado | Somewhat Simple | Creative Itch | CraftOManiac | Sugar Bee - Craft Edition  | Along for the Ride |  Not JUST a Housewife | C.R.A.F.T |