Quiet book: fishing page

It's time for a quiet book blog post!

This is a quiet book fishing page.

I modeled this page after a couple different fishing versions that I found. 

I really liked how this fishing page looked because it was so cute. 

But I also liked the idea of a Bible based book ie becoming fishers of men or Jesus and the miraculous catch of fish (John 21:6). 

There was this page with a net that I liked.

I took the ocean page from the first blog and added a boat at the top.

 I took the idea of the net from the second blog to store the fish when not in use. 

The net is actually a bag that some marbles came in. I put in a vinyl bag (also a recycled package from something) inside the net so that the fish didn't get stuck when trying to put them in. Then I sewed the netting to the vinyl bag just to keep then together and I weaved ribbon through the top of the netting so that it would close like a drawstring.

I thought that the fish on the first blog were cute so I made templates of those and cut them out of felt. I reinforced them with Pellon and stuck a paper clip in between before I sewed them together. I super glued the eyes on (which didn't stop some of the eyes from falling off. Oh well) 

I didn't get a picture of the fish before I let Koala play with them so two of octopus' legs are shorter in the picture.

I ran out of time before we went on our trip so here is Koala using a makeshift fishing pole which worked well for a while. But Koala used this page so often that eventually the fishing pole fell apart so she couldn't use it anymore. That's when I finally decided to make the real fishing pole. 

I took a wooden disposable chopstick that had a thick end and drilled a hole in it. Then I threaded some ribbon through the hole and tied it to the stick so that it wouldn't fall through. On the end of the ribbon, I attached a round magnet using a glue gun. Then I decorated it to look like a round fishing tackle/bobbin.

This is the finished fishing pole and up close pic of the tackle (which kind of looks like a pokeball).

Koala seems to enjoy this page a lot because no matter how many time she plays with it, it's still fun. She loves catching the fish over and over and it keeps her busy for a while. This page is definitely one of my favorite not only because I like how it turned out but because Koala loves playing with it.  

Quiet book: Lost sheep

When looking up pages for Koala's quiet book, I discovered that a lot of people use the quiet books to entertain their children during church so there were quite a few Bible pages. One Bible quiet book page was to find the lost sheep. 

I took this idea and decided to make a background like this forest page. 

I liked how the page had different layers and got the idea that each layer could be a hiding spot for the sheep.

 I started off with the bottom layer and made a mountain. I sewed the bottom and side but left an open pocket where the sheep could hide. I reinforced the mountain with Pellon to make it more sturdy. I added the tree and once again left open a pocket where the leaves were. Then I added the bush and pine tree. Next was the grassy hill and last was the rock that rolls away using a brad. Each piece was reinforced with Pellon and then sewed to the page leaving a pocket for where the sheep can fit in. Most of my other pages I hand sewed but it was easier to use my sewing machine for this page.

This bottom picture shows the rock rolled away. 

For the sheep, I saw this cute sheep on Pinterest. 

Even though a template was given, I ended up making my own by tracing a picture of the sheep from my computer screen. I hand sewed the sheep and stuffed a little bit of cotton in it to give it a little depth. 

Here's a picture of the six possible hiding places for the sheep. 

I really liked how this page turned out. Koala doesn't really play with it by herself because it's more of a page to play with someone. But when we were on the plane for our trip, we played with it for a while. I would hide the sheep and she would find it. 

She still will briefly play with it now when she's flipping through the book. She'll say 'where's the sheep?' and then find it from where I put it from the last time she used it. Then once she finds it, she moves onto the next page.