Quiet book: The Wheels on the Bus/Pigeon

For this page, I combined the Wheels on the bus page with the Pigeon from Don't let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

I got my inspiration for the bus page from these two blogs: this and this.

I actually used the bus from the second blog as my template (traced from my computer screen like most of my templates). 

I sewed the bus onto background felt and left open the bottom of the window so that the pigeon could ride in there. That bottom part of the window is reinforced with Pellon to make it more sturdy when putting the pigeon in. 

Page in progress: Koala had fun with it even before it was finished- she stuck her toy frog in the bus.

For the pigeon, I traced the template from the actual book. The big pigeon books are about the size of the quiet book pages so the pigeon was just the right size for the template. I made the front design and sewed all the pieces onto Pellon. Then since pigeon was going to be taken in and out, I figured I should cover the back of the Pellon so I added felt to the backside as well. Since it has 2 layers of felt and the Pellon, it's pretty sturdy, 

I added wheels that I cut out of black stiff felt. (You can find some large sheets of stiff felt in limited colors like black, dark blue, and sometimes red but they're about a dollar a sheet and make just one page if you use it for the background. Since it costs a lot more than using the white Pellon, I usually use the stiff felt for small things. ) 

I found big orange brads that I put as the hub caps so that the wheels turn. (The wheels of the bus go round and round... Something you can sing while playing with the page together).

Here's the finished product. (I forgot to take a picture of it when I first made it so doesn't look as nice since Koala used it a lot). 

Pigeon riding the bus- he still doesn't get to drive!

Koala playing with the page- putting pigeon in the bus. 

Quiet book: piggy bank & purse

Piggy bank:

This page has a pretty simple concept of putting money in the piggy bank. 

I found a piggy bank  quiet book page that I liked on Pinterest. 

On one side she had a cute pig that you could put coins into. Then on the other side of the page, there's a pencil case bag that catches the coins. 

I decided to combine the piggy bank page with a purse page like this one 

I thought instead of having a pencil case on the backside of the piggy bank page, why not have a purse there. Then the money can go in the piggy bank and then it goes in the purse and can be spent lol! (lol I know, I know that's the opposite concept of saving!)

For the piggy bank page, I traced the pig from the one page because I thought the pig was cute. 

I cut a slit at the top and reinforced it with Pellon. I also made sure to sew it to the inside of the purse page on the back so that when the coins go in, they fall into the purse on the other side. 

I was going to use juice tops like the other website. I bought the frozen juice just so that we could have the juice tops for the coins but Hubby recycled them before I could grab them. So I ended up getting play coins instead. 

I couldn't get a good picture but you can see the inside of the purse (the brown and red) when you open up the piggy bank. 

For the purse, I didn't want to just make a generic looking purse. I modeled my purse after the LV neverfull- only the best for my Koala! 😉

I initially thought about making this page into a weave page. 

But to make the neverfull look realistic, the strips of felt would be too thin and probably wouldn't survive as a weave page.

I used dark brown and tan felt which I cut into thin strips. In retrospect, I wish I used a regular brown rather than the tan because I think that would've matched the color of the real purse better. But I didn't want to redo it. 

I then took the strips and weaved them together to make the checkerboard look. Then I sewed the pieces to a piece of Pellon.

When that was done, I set that aside and worked on the inside on the purse. On the inside of the purse I made the slit from the piggy bank look like the zippered pocket of the inside of the purse. And of course, since the Neverfull is lined red, I put red felt on the inside and sewed that all down. 

This is what it looks like from the top looking in.  (I didn't snap a picture of what it looked like before putting it all together.)

 I then sewed that checkered pellon piece to the back page of the piggy bank. 

Somehow the purse ended up slanted on the page which kind of bothers the OCD side of me but it was too hard to redo so I left it. 

I added accents to make the purse look realistic- leather trim and metal rings. 

The page looks pretty bare to me and I keep thinking I need to add something to the background but not too sure what to add so for now, the page is done.

Quiet book page: Hello Kitty

Time for another quiet book post.

Another popular page is doll dress up- similar to paper doll dress up only with felt - like from this blog

Once again I wanted to make pages with things that Koala was familiar with so one day when Koala was coloring in her Hello Kitty coloring book, I came up with the idea of a Hello Kitty dress up page. This was easier than making a doll template since I wasn't sure how cute I could make the doll. Plus making the clothes for Hello Kitty was easy. 

I traced the template of Hello Kitty from the coloring book since there was one page that had the perfect size for the book. 

I added a strip of Velcro just so the felt wouldn't get as worn out from the sticky part of the Velcro. 

For the clothes, one quiet book had an armoir to hold the clothes which I thought was a cute idea. 

I traced the armoir from this page and just made it wider to fit my 11x11 page. 

The outfits are 'hanging' on the inside. I put strips of velcro on the inside of the armoir and the back of the outfits. Each outfit is reinforced with Pellon and sewn together. I had matching bows for the outfits but some have gotten lost. 

Some of the pins & outfits: pic taken when I was in the process of making them

Koala is so funny because when Hello Kitty is in between outfits and isn't wearing anything, Koala says, 'Hello Kitty cold!' and then she shivers and puts an outfit on Hello Kitty. lol

This page was one of the pages that kept Koala busiest on the plane and it's probably the most worn out page because she uses it the most. She seems to enjoy changing Hello Kitty's outfits and accessories. Success!