Busy Book

This week marks the first of my 3 sisters to get married this year! We have been gearing up for this first trip across country. We are flying and need a lot of activities for my 2 year old son. He can share the DVD player with his sister and watch movies, or play games on the iPad, and I even have some books and coloring but I wanted something new to entertain him, so I started making a busy book. I have seen several on Pinterest, and thought they looked fairly easy if I used felt, well I definitelly underestimated the project. Its not as nice as I would like but its done! My sewing machine revolted against the felt so I did mainly hand sewing and gluing.

Here's a list of what I did:
Jonah and the Whale Zipper Mouth
Monkey & Elephant Button Balloon
Marble Maze
Velcro Shapes
Bead Counting from 1 to 10
Seat Buckles
Joseph and the Colorful Coat Snaps
Go Fish - with Magnet Pole
Moon & Star Snaps
Rocket String
Lock & Key


In the end I didn't put anything on the front and back flaps, I figured I could add it later. I bought a yard of blue felt and had more than enough which was good because I didn't anticipate having the sewing from one side show on the other, so on some pages I gluded or sewed another piece of felt on top to avoid the other page showing through.
I started by cutting the pieces of felt like a book so it was 17x11 inches - including cover it was 4 pieces (I actually started with more but decided to pair down).

I started with the center page (a double page of buckles) all other pages are single pages.

I put each page together individually, then sewed it all together.

For the animals and people, I printed out coloring pages and used them as templates for the shapes.

For the fish, I sewed washers in between two matching pieces of felt instead of just sewing the washer on the outside.

I found chalk worked better on felt then my regular fabric marking pens

I used a magnet in the red pocket to hold the lock down a little bit better. I tried tying it at the top like the other things but it kept getting tangled and falling out the top. This isn't perfection but works better. I'm no professional, just a mom trying to keep her kid entertained. Truth be told, if I can do it, so can you!!! Go get to it!