Wednesday 18 August 2010

Oscar's Felt Storyboard

Today is my sweet little nephew Oscar's 2nd birthday. I really wanted to make him something and unique as a gift. Being the only nephew to a hoard of siblings and the only grandchild on both sides, there is no doubt tones of nice shiny store bought presents, which i must add is awesome but i really wanted to give him something made just for him and his tastes.
Few weeks ago i stared thinking what to make him. He's a very active child, loves story times and often seeks out his own adventure. So after a while i decided i wanted to make him a kind of interactive storyboard that could also double as a wall decoration for his room. In the end this is what i came up with.
Oscar loves my parent dairy farm, he loves being outside, all the animals and especially the tractors and bikes. The design is made using a large wooden frame with MDF base, this one one i picked up at one of my many local op shops.
Then take two 25cm section of felt from the bolt to form the background, i used a royal blue for the sky and lime green for grass, these are hand stitched together to for a sheet. I then added a tan road made from a square of felt and stitched it to the hills. Finally using a staple gun i attached sheet to the MDF base to complete the background for this piece.

I then hand cut and stitched all the different little characters using more felt squares. Each little character has a small section of adhesive Velcro (the hook part) attached to the back, allowing the little characters to be removed and played with separately or repositioned on the storyboard. Once complete i refitted the backing board into the frame and added a new string to the back of the frame ready for hanging.

The whole thing took about 6 hours to complete over a couple of days but i'm really happy with the way it's come out. I can't wait to give it to him to see what he thinks.
All the felt, floss, thread and Velcro can be purchased from any good craft shop or store like Lincraft or Spotlight. If you love this piece but you're not that crafty i would be more than happy to make one (i can do almost any scene it doesn't have to be a farm) on commission, they would take a few days to complete depending on my work load and market commitments. If anyone is interested just send me an email.



2 comments:

ppp said...

This is beautiful!

ppp said...

This is beautiful!