Fun with felt!

Library from one of the mats

I posted about this project over on my Christmas blog, but I know that not everyone visits there, so thought I would put up a short post about it here as well.  Back when I was brainstorming with my Nevada daughter about handmade Christmas gifts for their kids, she suggested these Felt Play Mats for use with matchbox-type metal vehicles.  If you go to the tutorial, you'll see that the designer has done some with other themes, like princess, pet shop, and even Gotham City!  Very creative, but I decided that if my Batman fan grandson wanted Gotham City, he could make one himself!

These mats are very cute and I thought they looked easy, so after chatting with our local daughter and getting her take on it, I planned to make two of them.  Let's just say they were not as easy as I thought, but I eventually did complete them ... just not in time for Christmas. 

Here's the first one:

And the second one:

And the local kids getting the first look at theirs:

The kids have been having lots of fun with these, but unfortunately, due to a construction error on my part, they aren't holding up really well.  In assembling the buildings for the mats, I used white glue to put them together and then hot glue to attach them to the actual mats.  Some of the lettering and details are starting to peel off, so if any of you actually try making these, I suggest using either fabric glue, tacky glue, or a small glue gun.  I had just had enough of hot glue and didn't want to use it for the details.

This was a fun project, all in all, more fun to design than it was to assemble.  I used many of the ideas from the tutorial and came up with quite a few fun ideas of my own.  Maybe some children in your life would like a Felt Play Mat too!