Baby Quiet Books

I made these 2 quiet books over the past 2 weeks.  I could have made them in less time, but I'm easily distracted so they took a while.  I've made so much quiet book stuff over the past month (click here to see the other quiet books I made) that I guess I'm getting a little burnt out on it.  I'm more excited for my next project because it's for Halloween, and I love Halloween!  I think making Halloween projects means you can watch Halloween movies and listen to cheesy Halloween music while you make them, so that will be a highlite to my upcoming days.  (Doesn't that make my life sound pathetic?)  Anyway, back to the quiet books....

I made 2 of these: one for our baby and one for my brother and sister-in-law's baby girl, due Jan 2012.  I tried to make them more baby/toddler-aged-appropriate than the books I made before, so that he can play with them at a younger age.  I think some of the pages are more appropriate for a younger age, but some of them would be fun for older kids, too.  At first I guess all babies do is put stuff in their mouth anyway, so we'll still wait a few months to take this out for him.  One thing I would change if I made these again is that I'd make them smaller.  Here they're probably about 9"x9" square (maybe a little smaller), but since they're for a baby I think they'd work better if they were about half that size.  That wouldn't necessarily take any time off of making them, because you'd still be doing the same amount of cutting and sewing, just reducing the size, but it would make them more manageable for a smaller-sized person.  But then again, babies like big, bold colors and shapes to look at, so maybe they are better in the bigger size... I don't know.  These 2 books are pretty much the exact same, except for the girl's I chose more pastel colors and did a few things to make it girly.

This is both of them... the pink heart is for the girl and the blue heart is for the boy - I know, so creative.

I'll just show the pages mostly from our boy's since they are basically the same in both books.

I made this button page because my sister-in-law, Julia, said her daughter really loved grabbing buttons when she was a young baby.  JoAnn's has a bunch of button packs that are really big, and cool shapes and colors.  This page probably took the longest because I sewed on each button by hand.  If I ever do another one of these pages, I'm going to figure out how to sew on buttons with my machine.

I love this lion page... it's supposed to be fun for the baby to touch and grab the ribbons.  We'll see how much my baby likes it when he's born.  I'd love to say I just made up this page because it's so cute, but I didn't.  I copied it from here.

This is just a simple finger-puppet page and was actually pretty fast to make.  I designed all the finger-puppets myself, but they're pretty simple so I'm sure there are lots of puppets out there that look similar.  I'm just always proud of myself when I don't copy something from another person's blog, okay?

I love these little puppets, especially the lion.  The dog one is designed after my sweet Rosie girl.  I tried to make whatever animals I thought would be the easiest and fastest, that's why they don't really have anything to do with each other.  But I think it will be fun to teach my son to make the lion kill the rabbit and eat it.  Poor little rabbit.

I'm not so sure about this page.  I read that little kids like to look for treasures, but I didn't make this as "I Spy" as I probably should have.  I just filled it up with stuff.  Hopefully he likes it.  If I ever make another page like this, I'm going to glue the little circle mirrors back to back so they're reflective on both sides, because right now sometimes the mirrors get turned over and then I get really annoyed and have to fiddle with the page until they turn back over.  I got the idea for this page here.

I got the idea for this page here.

I was going to do a page with 3 different zippers that the baby could just play with, but then Julia suggested that I make a monster with a zipper mouth.  I wasn't going to do it, but then I decided that I'd rather sew on one zipper instead of 3.  I'm glad I went with this idea because I think it's a lot funner than just the 3 zippers. I just bought some cute baby pajamas that have little monsters all over them, and I designed the monster after one of those.

Here's why this zipper page is a lot funner than my original idea... I put little felt monster food inside him, and I think a baby/toddler would like playing with that and taking it out and putting it back in.

Little mirrors for looking in and reflecting.

Feather fabric and tassles to touch.

Beads to move around and count (when he gets old enough to count).

Shape page.

I made the shapes and colors match so he can learn about both while he plays with it.  I kept the shapes attached to string so they won't get lost.  I was going to do velcro, but I think string works better for keeping it in the book.

 Here are a few pages from the girl book that are more "girly" than our son's book.

I made scalloped edges on the window page.  I can't stand looking at that one edge where I accidentally cut off a scallop, so I'm glad this book won't be mine so I don't have to look at it.

The monster for her book has big, beautiful red lips.  After I made this page, the monster page from my son's book kept trying to kiss her!  Bad monsters!  I had to keep them apart!

Her butterfly has hearts.  How sweet.

See, basically the same, just more pastelly.