Makeup Palette Felt Board Play Set

Hanging Tahlia's felt board on her bedroom wall was a big achievement! After we set it up with a calendar ready for starting school, she decided to use the free space to pretend to do her makeup for school in the morning - just like Mummy does for work.


Which inspired me to make her this...

... her very own makeup palette!

You can make your own with our free template available here.

I used craft glue to attach the felt to the background, and hot glue to attach the plastic pocket. You don't have to attach them at all if you don't want to - aside from the plastic pocket of course. 

Tahlia really enjoyed adding the glitter glue to the top of the oval eye shadows. I won't pretend I didn't enjoy it either. It really makes the item, really topped it off.

This activity provides a great opportunity to learn shapes and colours. And I suppose if you don't attach the items, you could use it to learn spatial awareness too.

I refuse to spell colour the American way... the English way is correct in Australia, and so much more rich and colourful - pun intended!

It does fall off the felt board easily when played with, which is disappointing. It is just too heavy. It will stay up for days when not being played with though. If you have one of those A-frame or slanted felt boards, it would work wonderfully I'm sure. Here is our tutorial on How to Make a Felt Board.

I will probably convert the makeup palette into a quiet book page once it gets neglected like most toys do eventually. Hopefully that will spark another bout of imaginative play, and I'll get twice the value out of my efforts.

See also:

Menorah felt board play set for Hanukkah

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Which colours would you need to include if you made a make-up palette?

Sublimation Printing on Felt - Test

I have spent a lot of time researching the best AND most affordable way to print on felt.

Background:

I wanted a method of actually printing on felt, rather than using t-shirt transfer paper which leaves a plastic film on top of the felt. This plastic layer prevents felt from sticking to itself and makes layering difficult. Layering is very useful for felt board story play sets and quiet books, such as dress up dolls and the like.

Sublimation printing transfers the ink directly into the felt fibers, and because it uses pigment based ink instead of dye based ink (which is water soluble) it tends to last well even after washing. A sublimation printer prints the pigment ink onto sublimation paper. After it has dried, the paper is layered on top of the felt and pressed in a heat press. This heats the ink so fast that it quickly turns to a gas and transfers from the paper onto the item - in my case felt.

After I came to the conclusion that sublimation printing was most likely the best way to go, I set about finding a way to make it affordable.

There are a couple of companies that offer such services online, such as Bags of Love or Contrado in the UK. It is rather expensive, particularly if you do not live in the UK!

I considered buying my own sublimation printer and heat press - which would have been more affordable than buying from overseas. I joined as many sublimation printing groups on Facebook as I could to find out what were the good brands and such. Most importantly, I wanted to check that sublimation printing on felt does actually work before I made an investment in a printing system.

I quickly discovered that an affordable machine does not come with the most vibrant inks. And the ink can dry up and clog the printer if you don't use it regularly. Since my use would only be as a hobby, I decided it would be better to let the professionals deal with those issues.

In a couple of the local sublimation printing groups I asked if someone might be willing to do a test for me. Thankfully Leonie from Digitextiles offered to test some felt samples for me at no cost!

Digitextiles Test Sample Results:

Club House felt roll (Spotlight) - was SUCCESSFUL and improved the fiber quality (I was worried that it was not good enough but the heat press tightened the structure of the fibers)

Acrylic felt packaged roll (Spotlight) - was SUCCESSFUL

Arbee 50 pack A4 felt sheets (Spotlight) - was SUCCESSFUL

Acrylic felt by the meter (Spotlight) - was SUCCESSFUL

Arbee stiffened felt sheets (Spotlight) - was SUCCESSFUL but became a lot thinner than it was originally, although it remained stiff

Sullivan's A4 felt sheets (Lincraft) - was SUCCESSFUL and remained around the same thickness and quality

All felt was heat pressed for 45 seconds at 190 degrees Celsius with no preshrinking.

Screen printed fabric on heat press to sure
 ink in studio by Scrud123

• CC-BY-SA-3.0

My Felt Printing Plan:

In an effort to make printing on felt affordable, I asked Leonie if she would be willing to print and post me sublimation paper only. That way I would only have to buy a heat press and I would also be saving bulky postage and providing the materials and manpower myself. Transferring individual parts of an image to stiffened felt can be done as required and would not be causing too much mucking around for a sublimation printing business (which would also put costs up).

She has agreed! Printing costs are around $20 per 1 x 1.48m area plus postage. This area fits around 21-25 A4 sheets of images. She prefers images are sent via email or drop box. They should also be sent as individual images rather than as a 21 page PDF (which suits me perfectly).

If you are interested in using this method, here is a great buying guide by STAHLS' for what to look for in a heat press.

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If you have any suggestions of what I could make using sublimation printing I'd love to hear from you!

Making Time To Sew - Blog Hop

We are all busy people. I work full time and I have a family, and I have a blog to run and house to clean. So how do I find time to sew? I'll share 5 tips on how to make the most out of your probably limited crafting time below.

To be honest I used to get major jealousy when I read other people's blogs that mentioned all the lovely sewing they had time to do during nap-time. I had dreamed about sewing during nap-time. But nap-time barely existed for me. Tahlia was never a great sleeper.

I started sewing quiet books during the one hour I had after bedtime before I was completely exhausted and had to go to bed myself. It gave me something to think about during the day.

How do you set aside time or find time to sew? This post is part of a blog hop - to read up on some more ideas on how to find time to sew visit the other lovely blogs listed under my tips below:

I guess this question could be phrased a little differently... How can I stay motivated? If you are motivated, you WILL find time to sew!


1. Do SOMETHING every day. 

It doesn't have to be much, but eventually you get there! Some days all I do is cut off the ends of the cotton that I sewed the day before. I might even just change the thread to the right colour on my sewing machine. Sometimes I cut out the pattern, or even just part of it... I've still done something!


2. Pack everything you need for your project into a bag. 

Obviously you can't pack the sewing machine, but you can pack scissors, material, pins and get a lot of things ready to sew when you do have time at home. And because everything you need is right there, you don't need to get discouraged that you can't find what you need and will have to go through the mess in the garage trying to find it when you really just want to go to bed. When everything is ready to go, you will feel more motivated.

Items I take to sew (plus scrap felt) - everything goes into plastic kitchen or
stationary containers so they don't get lost or fall out (pins)...
plus there is a sneak preview on an upcoming quiet book page :)

Now you can take it with you to work or the doctor's waiting room (if you have to wait hours, you can get started on it - if Murphy's Law works for you, you will not have to wait long). You can take it anywhere! I started a new job a while ago and the tea room was a little icy to begin with. I couldn't be bothered trying to break into a friend group. So I just took my sewing to entertain myself. It broke the ice with a few people for me, and soon I had plenty of friends and an opportunity to share my faith.

Items I take to help draw up my templates

I try to do the cutting out and pinning etc when I'm out so when I do get a second at home, I use the time on the sewing machine which I can't take to work. That way I am more efficient with the time I do get at home.


3. Celebrate small successes :) 

I show my progress to my husband and text pictures to my sister and Mum. There are lots of interest groups on Facebook that are great to get inspiration (and admiration) too.


4. Don't worry too much about small decisions or lack of skills. 

My sister pretends she is making her quiet books for someone else - that way she doesn't worry about the details so much and finds she can get things finished quickly. If you can't choose between colours, don't worry, it will probably look great either way. And your child will probably enjoy it either way. Also, they won't complain that your sewing is not professional enough. It will still be tons of fun and learning, and therefore achieves the goal.


5. Do the easy bits first.

That way you haven't got much left when the hard bit comes, and you want to see the outcome.

I hope these tips will help keep you motivated and sewing!

For more tips on how to find time to sew, visit:

Jen at Faith and Fabric

Amanda at Fabric Engineer

Karen at Tu-Na Quilts

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If you have any tips on how to make time to sew, please share in the comments below!