A World of Possibilities...

can be found in a felt board!   It has been on my wish list for Ace for a while now, but they're so expensive or small for the reasonable prices and so I decided to make my own.   I gathered the supplies today.   A 16x20 canvas for $6 and I got a half a yard (more than enough!) felt for a steal of a deal due to 'damage' for $1.25, my trusty staple gun, and some scissors to cut the excess fabric away.

The entire process takes about 10 minutes, my corners were pretty rough, but I didn't plan well for them (I had a helper wanting to assist with a hammer and a staple gun!!) so it certainly isn't very 'retail ready' but since it's for our own use, there's no need for that status and thus. I stapled on the inside of the lip so that there wouldn't be anything scratchy on the back of the canvas.  One tip is to make sure you pull the felt tight as you go so there are no ripples on the front of your canvas.   I used a hammer to ensure the staples were all the way in and ta-da!  All done!

Next up is creating different worlds to explore on the felt board.   While felt boards can (and will be) used for educational purposes they also are a lot of fun for just having fun.   I decided with my eager helper awaiting 'fun' that I would whip up an ocean theme really fast.  I cut some waves, made a few boats, and then tossed a few people into them.  All in all it took about 5 minutes to create his ocean adventure and he was quite satisfied to take it off and put it back on over and over before it was time to head off to bed.

Before he went to sleep, I asked what else he'd like for his felt board and he said 'a house' and having found earlier today a pattern for a whole house of excitement, I got straight to work after he went to sleep.   From start to clean up with intermission to feed Mae it took two hours.  Not too shabby and I had fun doing it. Looking forward to creating more worlds for Ace to explore in the future.