I Felt Like It

Yesterday's post was about how our road trip has turned pirate.  In writing it, I had forgotten the other thing that helped me change my mind toward pirating- this Disney Pirates of the Caribbean personal CD player.  I bought it during the Christmas season because it was only $5 and I thought it would be convenient for our road trip.  I really like that it has a hanging piece, that the door to the CD chamber has a "lock," and that it has two "jacks" already on it (no need for a headphone splitter).

Today, I'm featuring some of the felt projects I've been working on for our trip (I didn't make them all today).  First is the car play mat I made for the boys (primarily).  The track fits a micro machine.  I got the design from this maze and used freezer paper to cut it out.  Everything has been hot glued down.  I wanted the boys to be able to make up their own ideas about the buildings on the mat, what they were or who lived/worked in them.  The pink flecks are flowers and the blue blob is a lake/pond.  I still need to add the car, which I intend to tether to the mat.  The whole thing can be rolled up and stored in a tin (eventually).

The next project was a lot of fun and pretty simple to make.  The base is a cake board that I cut down so it would fit in a gallon zip lock bag.  The colors are cut from felt and hot glued to the base and the clothespins.  It wasn't until I was photographing that I realized I was missing the orange "paintbrush."  The idea for this project came from here.

All the pirate pins (Pinterest) got me in the mood to make this treasure map/small world mat.  I'm hoping to buy the Safari pirate toob for it.  The idea came from here.  I wanted to leave this play mat open to the kids' imaginations too, so I didn't add a lot of details.  I wasn't even going to put the "X" on it but my husband talked me into it.  The free-hand "x" looks much better than my "sea creature" so what can I say?

Marble mazes are all over Pinterest right now.  This one was created by sewing over a free printable (here).  I'm working on making one for each of the kids to have in their personal car bags.  So far, I've finished the pink one and the blue one.  Now, I just need to get the green one done.

The "marble" inside is a flat glass stone from the Dollar Tree.





Here's another non-original idea- the button snake.  It seems like every blogger/Pinterester is making one these days.  It was a really good way to practice cutting felt before I started on the harder pieces for the play mats.  I intend to make at least one more "snake," this time with a small button on one end and a larger one on the other.  Then, the felt pieces will be smaller and so will the holes (for more realistic buttoning practice).

Check out this other fun pirate-y idea I found- gold coin cookies (ok, these are not edible- but they could be!).

Well, that's it for today.  Perhaps my crazy crafting is done for a while (or not).