A Birthday Book

So - as you know - our kiddo just had his first birthday - which is very hard to believe. It seems like both much longer and much shorter since he arrived. For this momentous occasion, I wanted to get him a great gift that he would really enjoy for a while (like, at least a month), and of course, it needed to be handmade. Right now - he really likes books, particularly with different textures, and especially ones that rhyme. He's also really into zippers and pushing buttons. So, I decided to make a book with all those things.

1. Research & Shop
So - I googled and pinterested around for a bit, and discovered that I was stumbling on to something that already existed called a "quiet book" - presumably meant to be a quiet distraction for places like church. I went to Amazon and ordered a book on how to make felt animals, some felt, stuffing, sequins and beads. I already had embroidery thread and needles. Then (after letting this project grow a bit more complicated), I went to Joanne fabric and ordered some fabric quarters in various colors and more thread. The fabric quarters are selected to look similar to what you ordered, so what arrived wasn't exactly what I wanted, but was pretty close and awfully cheap.

the dining table looked like this for the last two months. 

2. Make Felt Animals
Once I had all the materials, I used the book to make some felt animals. The gist is pretty simple - you just cut out two copies of the outline of an animal, maybe add an extra appendage like a tail or ear or something, add some beads or other decoration, and then sew them together with a bit of stuffing to give it some dimension. It took me about 2 hours to make each animal, a little more for the ones with a lot of decorations, which made it perfect to do at night after he went to sleep. I made 2 or 3 animals for each habitat (forest, sea, etc), and then starting making my own designs for some alien monsters. I also thought it would be fun to get the grandmothers involved, so I mailed both of them the materials and patterns for an animal to contribute.

an owl

giraffe

3. Make the backgrounds
Once I had all the animal critters,  I needed backgrounds for them. Using more felt and the random fabric pieces, I cut out skies, hills, waves, horizons, and whatnot to create backgrounds for each page. I added some trees and bushes, seagrasses, and a farmhouse for more dimension and interest. These didn't get stuffed, so they were much faster to make. I think I pulled them all together in one or two nights.

a background for the giraffe

4. Add something extra to each page
So - at this point I had the makings of a pretty decent book, but it wasn't anything spectacular. I wanted to add something unexpected to every page for more texture and interest. I started with small things like buttons and shoelaces, and then went another step and decided to add some lights that he could switch on and off - a string of fairy lights to be stars on the space page and a push-button light (undercabinet light) to be the sun on another page. I tried to make a rocket ship that would light up and make noise when he pressed buttons - but once I started looking into making my own circuit boards with LED lights, I figured I had gone too far and scrapped the idea.

fairy lights taped to cardboard for the starry night sky

5. Add the Text
Spouso's contribution was the story line - so I just gave him the list of animals and he got to write the story, in rhyming couplets, of course. He decided at this point that the story would be about the animals coming to the kiddo's birthday party and forgetting how to get home, and that he would have to put the animals back on the pages where they belonged. A super cute idea - but it meant a little scrambling on my part to get velcro and add some extra pages to the front and back. Once he was ready, he used a sharpie to write the text on some blank white pages made of leftover curtain liner. I then made additional pages, using the same background as the main pages, and sewed his white text on. In a few cases, we had extra animals that couldn't fit on the main page that needed to be squeezed onto the text page.

a white text sheet and its background page getting sewn together

6. Put it all together
Lastly, I finally got to put everything together. Half of the critters got sewn onto the background pages, and the other half were stuck onto velcro, which was also stuck onto the pages (so that he can move them around). The critter pages were sewn to the text pages, with cardboard in between for support.

one page gets sewn to the next with cardboard in-between

The last step was trying to bind it all together, which turned out to be harder than I expected because the pages were so thick. I ended up just sewing them together on big fabric loops and sticking it in a 3" small binder for protection. Then, almost 3 weeks after his birthday and nearly 2 months after I started - the book was finally finished and ready to be read.

the party page with the 5 lost friends.

the farm page with a shoelace sun

the forest page with a button trail

the savannah page with a light-up sun

(lion by Nana)

the sea page with a zipper sea grass

(fish by Grandma)

the space page with LED stars (that are possibly too subtle to see)

Finale page with cats. 

button trail is the favorite so far

So - this project ended up being pretty massive. It took about two months total - but in the beginning I only worked on it every other night for 2 or 3 hours, and by the end I was working on it every night for many hours.  Clearly - you could make this a little easier on yourself by skipping some of the backgrounds or making fewer critters, but I got carried away. Regardless - I think it turned out pretty well, and he seems to be a fan.