Halloween Felt Play Boards

It's another "I love felt" addition on Spontaneous Clapping.

Mostly that's because I'm not very good at making things that are hard to handle.

Felt is easy to use, it's easy to cut, it's cheap, and hello, you can hot glue it!

3 weeks before the party I still had no idea what I was going to make for a party favor.

The first year we did the pumpkins in the pumpkin patch.

And really, you cannot beat the Adopt-A-Monster that we did last year.

I just can't.  Nothing is going to be as cute as that.  

Plus, I wasn't feeling the motivation to get anything done.

You know what I mean, there was no inspiration and I was seriously dragging my feet.

So mom was over, looking at my fall felt tree when she suggested I do some play panels as favors.

I was immediately excited but since I didn't have a game plan, I wasn't able to take advantage of Peanut's Yen Yen (grandma), my lovely mother in law who was in town.

She would have been more than willing to help cut out shapes but I just kept sitting down and staring at big pieces of felt.  This would continue for 2 weeks.  Felt Everywhere.

Contrary to what most of you think, I'm not very creative.

But I'm great at copying things!

As you can see a few pictures up, I have my phone out.

I like to google pictures so that I know what to sketch.

Google:  Pumpkin Outlines

Google:  Bride of Frankenstein

Pinterest:  Jack-o-Lantern faces

Pinterest: Witch Crafts

This is where I get my "original" ideas. 

My felt panels are 2' x 2' which is really big.

I wanted to be able to hang it on the wall or door handle and have the kids stand and use it.

Alternatively you could make it small enough to sit on their lap.

I thought about doing it on half-size baking sheet from the 99 cent store but I didn't want to bother with cutting out such small felt pieces for 24 different panels.

My mom made them look all professional by sewing a sort of open-ended hem, 

 adding a 2' dowel (from Home Depot), cutting a slit below the dowel (no problem with felt)

 and tied a string around it for hanging the panel.

I glued on some of the pieces so that the kids would have a general idea of what they were looking at.

I also wanted the big pieces to be anchored so the smaller pieces would stay on.

Each Frankenstein had pieces to make both the Bride of Frankenstein and the man himself.

This photo is too dark to really see her hair but I was pretty happy with it.

In general, the less the panel moves around, the better the felt pieces will stay on.

BUT if you're in a situation where it's getting jostled a lot, the pieces will fall off.

So, either lay it on the floor or table to be used

OR

stick some velcro on the back of the pieces.

This is what they do in a lot of preschools.  

The only disadvantage is that the velcro tears up the bottom piece of felt 

and over time it'll need to be replaced.

Jack-o-Lanterns!

You could get really creative with these.

I originally just cut out the eyes and decided later to make the masks.

The littler kids may have a hard time with all those individual eye pieces, so I thought this would be a way to help make it easier for them.

It also adds color.

You see what a difference it makes to just turn the mask upside-down?

A bow can also be a bow tie depending on where it is placed.

You could make costume faces too.

A kitty mask, a witches hat, a scarecrow face, etc.

I used one pumpkin as the stencil for the rest of them.

Working in duplicates really helped move things along.

We have witches!

Each one has a hat and several different "faces".

You could do a night sky behind her, a broom, a black cat or just a moon and stars.

Again, all I did was flip the eyes in the 2 pictures above and the faces look completely different.

This could be good teaching tool for feelings/emotions.

I also love these because they serve as decorations during Halloween.

This was how I felt when I accidentally cut through some pieces that were already finished.

Don't be lazy like me and cut felt on a table full of other felt pieces!

Owls.

You just can't go wrong with owls.

The body and the branch are hot glued on.

I sketched both with chalk on the felt,

cut it out, smacked the chalk off and then used that to trace and cut the rest.

I made the eyes by tracing the bottom of a kids cup on white felt, glued it to another piece of felt (in the above photo I used orange) and then cut that out.

I found I liked the pupils to be towards the bottom (or top) instead of the middle because it gave more character when you flipped it upside down.

This way the owl can always look in different directions, as you can see in the photos below.

The wings are not attached and I did decorate some of them.

Decorating the wings would be a great craft to do with the kiddos.

These are all decorated with scrap from this and other projects.

In keeping with the theme of the Halloween Outer Space Party, 

I also made some space ones that I will show to you later!

Maybe next year you can try some of these out… because it's already nearly 2 weeks since Halloween and I'm just getting this posted, ha!