Flannel Friday Roundup – 2/24/12

This week’s Flannel Friday Roundup (it’s a BIG one) features some really great contributions.  We have a lot of ideas for Dr. Seuss programs, and some great ideas to get us ready for spring and changing weather.  There are also some great ideas for non felty story ideas and props so make sure to check out all the wonderful ideas!

If you don’t see your Flannel Friday here, please let me know

I’ll pin all the board ideas to Pinterest later tonight (after the girls’ bedtime-it’s crazy here right now!)

First up, Lisa at lisaslibraryland has a really cute version of Bark George by Jules Feiffer (one of my favorite stories!!).  I love how you can actually reach into George’s mouth to pull out each of the animals he has swallowed.  So fun!

Stop by Tara’s blog Storytime with Miss Tara and Friends to read about her “Wiggle Worms” storytime with some great ideas for active storytime goers.  She shares a cute flannel verson of “This Little Piggie” where the pigs enjoy some tasty and healthy pretend food snacks.

Linda’s blog Notes From the Storytime Room gets us ready for spring (YAY!) with some cheerful puppets, and instructions on adding movments, to go with the poem “In springtime.”

Next up, Sarah from Read it Again! gets personal by asking the question “What color is your underwear?” with a really cute flannel board to match the book with adorable undies on the animals.

Sarah from Read, Sarah, Read! joins us for the first time (Yay! welcome) with a cool clothespin version of Let’s play in the forest while the wolf is not around by Claudie Rueda.  This is so cute, I love the mini clothespins that hold up his clothes

Katie from Recipe for Reading puts a clever dinosaur spin on the familiar song “Five Little Ducks Went Out to Play.”  I especially love the part where ‘Mama dinosaur said “roar, roar, roar”’ – really cute!

Erin has a cute Max doll with a huge pocket she added filled with all the items he “cleans up” from his room in the story Max Cleans Up by Rosemary Wells.  I’ve always loved the Max books, and this is such a cute idea!  Head over to her blog LibErin to see her story idea.

Melissa at Tickle the Clouds, shares her version of Stone Soup-the onion is especially cute .  And while the weather may not be cooperating where she lives, it’s yucky and rainy here today and a bowl of soup sounds wonderful!

At Mary’s blog Miss Mary Liberry you will find a really cute rendition of “See You Later Alligator” I love how she wrote the words with puffy paint on felt and then lined up the animals next to their rhyming line.  Great idea for print awareness!  The animals are really cute too

At Storytime ABC’s Kay gets us ready for Dr. Seuss’s birthday, March 2nd, with a great feltboard to match his book My Many Colored Days about colors as well as a Seuss book giveaway(!) Head over to her blog to find out how you can win a Dr. Seuss Book YAY!

Bridget at What is Bridget Reading? shares a felt board to reflect February being National Children’s Dental Health Month with really cute little crocheted teeth to match a poem “5 Little Teeth.”

At her blog, Miss Alison is Blogging! Alison shares another great idea for Dr. Seuss’s upcoming birthday celebration.  She made a cute Yottle in a Bottle prop to go use while reading There’s a Wocket in My Pocket.

Library Quine uses Stop and Go signs to use with the poem “I have a Little Bicycle” she also made signs for the storytime kids to hold up during storytime activities. Read more about her fun ideas at Loons and Quines.

Lucy shares a folder story to go with the book A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni on her blog In the Children’s Room. I love her ideas for how to change the chameleon’s color!  Really cool.

Melissa, from Mel’s Desk, shares another great Dr. Seuss idea.  She made some really cute eggs with different colored yolks to use with the book Green Eggs and Ham.  I love the poems she shared to use with the eggs, so clever!

Katie from Storytime Katie has a feltboard to use with the book It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles Shaw to use for an Imagination storytime.  She had the kids guess which shapes each of the felt pieces represented as she placed them on the board.  This story is always a favorite of mine too!

Andrea at Roving Fiddlehead Kid Lit shares a fun spaceship themed felt board today.  She shares her helpful spaceship pattern and the poem she adapted “Four Little Rockets” on her blog as well as information on a cute pin the space ship on the planet game.

Kari Annat My Storytime Life shares the first part of a really cute frog counting felt board. “Hippity Hop!” tune in next week to find out who is over the wall behind the frogs.

Jane at Piper Loves the Library has made up a fun version of “BINGO” in honor of her library puppet dog mascot Piper. The little felt girl is really cute

Mollie Kay from What Happens in Storytime shares a fun version of the song “I Went to the Pet Store” that is a great resource to teach rhyming words at storytime.

On her blog Narrating Tales of Preschool Storytime, Nicole shares a really cool looking magnet board story based on the book Stuck by Oliver Jeffers. I’m not familiar with this story but now I really want to check it out!!

Forest Tracks Felt board

Don’t forget to stop back by later tonight for the full Flannel Friday Roundup

For this week’s Flannel Friday I wanted to share a really cute storyt that I made into a felt board.  It’s a book called Forest Tracks by Dee Dee Duffy

It’s a guessing story where you see foot prints of an animal and hear a sound associated in some way with the animal.  For isntance large foot prints and a growling sound and the kids can guess bear.  Some of them you might need to give some additional hints, like for the racoon where the sound is a splashing as he fishes in the water for food.

I made mine a snowy winter background instead of grassy, although we don’t have any snow anyhow, oh well.  So for each page, I put the animal prints on the board and once the kids guessed the animal I put up it’s felt board image.

Busy Crafting Mommy Designs on Facebook

Have you seen my new facebook page for my digital scrapbook kit designs?  If not head over and check out a sneak peek at my upcoming kit for the STS Designer Darling Challenge. I’m really excited about this kit!  So far I only have some of the elements to share with you.

While you’re there feel free to like my page, I plan to have exclusive freebies just for fans in the near future

My Facebook Page

Designer Darling Challenge Round 3 and CU Freebie

So there are 20 of us left for round 3 of the designer challenge and this week we were asked to find three items to either scan or take photos of to make available as commercial use items which other designers could use. This set of items can be downloaded from the STS forum and I have a set of personal use freebies created with the commercial use ones that you can download below as well as an extra CU item I had extracted.

For those of you unfamiliar with the whole scrapbook kit making process (I keep having to explain it to my family!) it often involves using a mixture of elements and papers that someone else scanned and extracted (the kit designer can then add their own tweak to it, like colors, glitter, or textures, etc.) as well as making your own elements and papers.  So for instance in my previous challenge kit “A Road Less Traveled” (the yellow one) I used a flower that another designer scanned and made available to use commercially and I re-colored it and added glitter.  Then the leaf in my yellow kit I cut from a piece of silky fabric, ironed the creases in, scanned it, removed the background, recolored it, and added shading with the burn tool on photoshop.  The funny thing is that I originally wanted to  have a burned look to the edges of the leaf, but when I held the match flame to the fabric it just caught fire!  Fortunately I’d scanned it first, just in case

For my challenge I wanted to make items that could easily be recolored to fit any color scheme.  I love CU items that you can really tweak to your heart’s content.  So I collected a fun key I found in the dollar bin at Marshall’s with a pretty ribbon, a pretty fabric flower, and an awesome looking frame (also from the dollar bin and I picked up a round and square one too)  I thought it would be great if people could change the color of the ribbon (which was originally burgandy-ish) to match any kit they are making without also changing the color of the key or having to mess with the color replacement brush.   So here is the end result.  You can download this set from Stuff to Scrap by clicking on the image which will redirect you to their forum.

If you like these items, I’d love it if you vote for me for this round by clicking HERE

Again thank you to everyone who voted for me in the last two rounds.

And now some personal use items that I made using the above elements recolored to look fun and springy-I’m feeling really ready for spring
Click image to download

And an extra CU OK item for you

Ivory Keys CT Call

Ivory Keys Digital Dreams is looking to add a few new Creative Team members to her team.  Click on the image to be redirected to her blog for more information.  If you have been admiring all her kits I talk about on my blog, now is a great time to join the team.  Good Luck!

Shel Belle Scraps Newsletter

Just a quick announcement, Shel Belle has started a newsletter which she will release 2-3 times per month.  In it you can kind info on her newest kits and upcoming kits, tips and tricks, as well as coupons and freebies-just for subscribers!

Head over to her blog to read more and sign up.

Groundhog Day Feltboard and Cute Craft

I meant to post this last week, and had my blog all written and ready to go, but the day completely got away from me!  So here it is now. I’m also excited to announce that next week I will be hosting Flannel Friday for the first time!

I should have posted this sooner, but the feltboards really didn’t come together until the end.  But here is my groundhog program at little late

5 Little Groundhogs

The first little groundhog crept out of his lair (creep fingers)
The second little groundhog said, “Is spring in the air?” (sniff air)
The third little groundhog asked, “Is the time right?” (point to “watch” on wrist)
The fourth little groundhog squirmed, “The sun is too bright!” (shade eyes)
The fifth little groundhog squeaked, “My shadow I see!”
“I’m not staying out here! No siree! Not ME! (shake head no)
“Back to my burrow I’m going to creep.” (creep fingers)
“And for six more weeks I’m going to sleep!” (rest head on hands and close eyes)
                             ~From teachingheart.net

I also made a feltboard based (loosely) on the story from Liz and Dick Wilmes’ book Magnet Board Fun called “Gregory Groundhog Sees His Shadow.”

I just basically used the first and last paragraph from their book, where Greggory goes out to look for his shadow and sees the shadows of other animals.  As he sees each shadow I put it on the feltboard and had the kids guess what the animal was.  Most of them were pretty easy.  I narrated what he was thinking as he sees the shadows and discovers what each one really is.  Like for instance he realized he should have known the giraffe’s shadow was not his own since his neck isn’t nearly that long.  At the end he sees a shadow that scares him so much he races back to his burrow where he realizes he has just been frightened by his own shadow.  He decides to stay in his den for 6 more weeks to rest and recover from his fright.  The kids really liked it and they and the parents all had some good chuckles over Greggory’s confusion about the different animal shapes he sees.  I decided to just grab a few animals from my assorted felt board color sets and make matching shadows for them to use for this program.

At the end of the program we had a cute little craft that I also found at teachingheart.net where they linked back to a blog called Skip to My Lou that had the most adorable groundhog craft ever.  I substituted craft foam for the felt she used and used pompoms for the noses.  We had a variety pack of pompoms so some of the groundhogs had really colorful noses!
I had the slits in the cups cut ahead of time and the green felt glued around the cup already in place before storytime.  The kids did make their own grass by cutting the inch or so of felt that I left at the top of the cup.  They then glued their pre-cut groundhogs to the stick, added googly eyes, a nose, and teeth and were all set.  I made the groundhog body in one piece-the ears were part of the body, not separate pieces, again just to cut down on parts to assemble.
the kids all loved them and laughed out loud when I demonstrated how the puppet worked, they were a huge hit.  My youngest daughter continues to carry her groundhog (out of the cup) around the house.  Fiona shows off her groundhog

Katie at storytimesecrets is hosting the round up today and they will be posted later this evening.

STS Designer Darling Challenge Round 2 + FREEBIE :)

For round 2 of the designer challenge we were all able to pick any color palate we liked, the only criteria was that it had to be monochromatic.  Touches of color that did not fall in your palate were allowed (like black and white details) as long as the overall kit did a good job of reflecting your monochromatic theme.   I decided to make mine yellow, as I really am ready for summer and sunshine and warm days.  Once I decided on yellow I wanted to pick a theme and a name for my kit.  I decided to make my kit reflect the poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, because of the line “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood” so I decided to make mine woodsy, but I didn’t want it to be too Fall-ish.  More golden sunlight in the woods.

So here it is
Clicking on the image will take you to the Stuff to Scrap forum where you can download my kit.  I also have a freebie add on here on my blog which you can grab now.

Also please vote for me if you like this kit by clicking HERE (my name is listed as Crafting Mommy on the voting poll).  I would really appreciate it. I did well in the voting last round so a great big thanks to everyone who did vote for me!

Click image to download the add on.

The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

And here’s a page I made using my mini kit and the add on.

Fun new blocks

So I’ve been doing a lot of scrapbooking and scrapbook kit making lately and was ready for a much needed break from the computer and into a more tangible creative outlet.  So I finally got around to making these really fun blocks I saw at the Case Western Reserve Historical Museum.  You can see the original ones here.

I bought a nice piece of wood from Home Depot and cut it down to be little flat squares.  Then I printed out buildings that Fiona and I decided upon.  She wanted American Girl Place and I also suggested our houses, the grandparents’ houses, the library, and a few of our favorite museums.

I cut out these images and used Mod Podge to adhere them to the blocks.  Lexi helped paint on the glue.

After the Mod Podge dried I added a layer of clear spray paint to keep the Mod Podge from sticking to itself when the blocks are piled up together.

This was super easy to do and the blocks are so much fun to play with.  We tried them out with the Brio train and they look great with the set!  I plan to add more pictures of buildings to the backs of each block so they look nice from both sides when being played with.

Be Mine Kit by Shel Belle Scraps

I have a pretty Valentine’s Day kit by Shel Belle Scraps to share with you today.  It’s called Be Mine and would be great to scrap all your Valentine’s Day photos.  But the soft colors also make it great for scrapping everyday pictures as well. 

Click on the previews to be redirected to her store at STS.  Both items are 30% off right now

She also made a set of templates to go with it.

The first one also uses one of Shel Belle’s Be Mine templates