quiet book tutorial.

as mentioned here, at my workplace, we do a gift exchange for christmas. the catch is that the gift has to be either handmade, or locally made. it's a very long story as to why i only finished my gift this week, but it's finished.

my original idea was actually to make an alphabet book, but when i purchased this mme chipboard, i realized not all the letters were represented. so instead, i decided just to do another quiet book. after playing with it for awhile, i just decided to do a remake of the quiet book shown here since i had a lot of the supplies still, and because i always loved that first book.

supplies used:
- album: 5x7 (can't remember what brand, though)
- cardstock: coredinations
- pp: american crafts, we r memory keepers, the girls paperie, cosmo cricket 1, cosmo cricket 2, echo park
- rubons: american crafts ned jr
- alphas: various sassafras glitter alphas
- chipboard: my mind's eye alphabet soup boy + sassafras bungle jungle
- punch: fiskars threading water
- zoo label: october afternoon cardstock sticker
- other: velcro, cropadile, 1.5" binder rings

i adhered almost all of the chipboard using velcro, so that each piece could be taken off and played with. i made sure to adhere the 'softer' side of the velcro to the backside of each piece, so that it wouldn't scratch.
definitely my favourite page of the book - the zoo page. to make the cage, i cut a 5" x 3" piece of the echo park paper. i then cut a 6" x 3.5" piece of cardstock to back it. the cardstock should line up flush with the top of the pp, be 1/2" wider on either side and the bottom. cut the bottom corners at an angle. adhere the two pieces together and cut out the cage "bars" using an exacto knife. mine were 1/4" wide and started 1/2" from each side. make sure you don't cut the cardstock that hangs over! take the pieces that hang over and fold them underneath, essentially making a pocket for the animals, like shown below:
i wanted a counting page in this book, but unlike my original book i didn't want to make a button slide. instead, the mme chipboard had multiples of some pieces so i decided to use those to have the children count to 3.

my coworker has a little boy, so i thought it would be cute to have a page where he could drive up and down roads with the little car and bike. originally, i just drew the roads but they were lacking something and ended up looking like gray hills instead of roads. that's when i remembered i had this cosmo cricket paper and thought the lines would help define them as roads.
again, in the original book, i also had a spelling section, but because their names were a lot longer, i didn't have enough space. instead, i thought having them actually print their name would work just as well. this cosmo cricket paper worked great for this, having the same type of pattern like on printing paper in elementary school.

i love the idea of giving an interactive, fun children's books as gifts to new mamas, and hope that this book is loved and well used by the kids!