DIY: Felt Farm!

For being a person who enjoys “crafting” there are quite a few methods (medium?) that it took me a long time to try. I’ve only recently experimented with Mod Podge (and loved it), rag quilting, or felt – and each one of them was easy & addicting!

After seeing quite a few projects on pinterest that used felt (doll houses, bunting, quiet books, etc) I thought of making a small vegetable garden for N to play with her farm animals. The pin projects made it seem like an affordable and easy medium to use and I thought the material would work well for having removable fruits/veggies for the garden (Come on, who didn’t love “flannel boards” as a kid??) This project turned out so much cuter & easier than I thought that I went a little crazy and made her an entire felt FARM!

I bought a large piece of green felt for the barnyard (about $4/yard), and then separate color pieces (20-30 cents a piece at JoAnne’s!) to make: nesting boxes for her chickens, a mud pit for her piggies, a pond for the duck, and a flower bed for the goat & the garden with removable vegetables. We already had the little farm (came with ABCD & some little animals) and then some friends let us borrow their farm-themed Little People. The truck & tractor came from Ikea and the corral is a repurposed crate from a Melissa & Doug wooden fruit set!

All the big pieces (garden, nesting box, pond) are removable from the barnyard and the vegetables are removable so she can arrange them how she wants in the garden (also very good for practicing counting!)…all the small pieces are adhered with basic craft glue – no sewing necessary! 🙂

We gave this to her for her birthday along with a string-a-farm game (which about doubled the animal population on her farm!) and one of our favorite Boynton books. She was a little overwhelmed by it all, at first, but it is very cute to see her become more imaginative each time she plays with it – now the pigs go for a swim with the duck and the cat likes to play in the flowers with the goat! We also had a friend let us borrow their Little People Barn which is MUCH more exciting than the little ABC barn we had and it even plays Old MacDonald – her second favorite song to Twinkle Twinkle! 😉

If you haven’t already, I hope this post inspires you to try your hand with FELT – it is awesome – if your child isn’t into “the farm” you could make a prehistoric mat for playing with dinosaurs or an underwater world for fish or a road/city scape for driving cars & trucks…seriously, the possibilities are endless!