Toy Tuesday- Felt Board

      Recently, my father and I painted Sugar Bear's room and it got me thinking about putting up a chalk board for her.  As I thought about what that would involve I remembered I had an old felt board made from the time I was student teaching.  I thought that would be great for her room!!!  Once I decided on the felt board I began thinking about making new pieces for the board.  I wanted to make pieces she would like to play with and won't cost me an arm and a leg.  I looked around my house and found some iron-on transfer paper that I was going to use to make some t-shirts and I thought why not try to make my own pieces. 

     What I found by doing this process is that finding the images to use was the hardest part.  The pictures may look good when you save them but they don't always look good when you make them bigger.  After some searching I found my first set of pictures...Disney princesses.  Sugar Bear loves her princesses.  So, I printed the pictures onto the transfer paper and began the process of ironing them on (followed the instructions that came with the iron-ons).  The first batch of felt pieces was made on single sheet felt that you get from Michaels.  I really had no issues with the felt itself because the paper was the same size as the felt.  What I did notice if I didn't leave the iron on a picture long enough the picture had some cracks in it.  If you look at Cinderella you will see what I mean.  Belle came out great!!

     My next to sets I used a yard size piece of felt that you find at Michaels.  I found when your iron moved off the paper and touched the felt, the felt melted and stuck to the iron.  Once I figured that out I was really careful to stay on the paper.  Also, when positioning your pictures on the paper make sure you leave a gap between the edge of the paper and the picture.  The pictures that where to close to the edge did not transfer well.  The edges near the side of the paper did not stick no matter how long I left the iron on them.

    

My Little Pony

Phineas and Ferb (minus Ferb see placing picture to close to the edge)

     For now the felt board lives in Sugar Bear's work space and the pieces have a nice drawer to live in until I make a bigger board or hang the old one.