Win Toys for Toddlers! Handmade Felt Crown from Felted Kitten! CLOSED!

We all know how little ones LOVE dressing up! They pretend to be princes and princesses, knights and  fairies, firefighters, chefs, Indians and cowboys, and everything else that comes to their minds! And it's a great thing! Their creativity has no limits and we often stay amazed with ideas they come up with!

Today's sponsor for our giveaway is a lady who creates really cute dress up items and she puts her heart into making them in a way her little costumers desire! Meet Katrina from an Etsy shop Felted Kitten!

All of the items in Felted Kitten shop are handmade from recycled felt and she creates custom crowns, banners and cupcakes little one will love! Using them for everyday play or special occasions as birthday parties or anniversaries, either way they will make each celebration even more festive!

One of the items offered in Felted Kitten shop is Eco Friendly Felt Crown with adjustable ribbon tie. These felt crowns can be purchased in number of colors: sunshine yellow, orange, light pink, medium pink, hot pink, kelly green, red, light blue, medium blue, medium purple & dark purple; and you get to pick a ribbon color too from: yellow, orange, light pink, hot pink, green, red, light blue, medium blue & purple. Their ribbon can be adjusted to fit either child or adult.

DISCOUNT ALERT: Until the end of this month all of our readers can purchase any of the toys from Felted Kitten store and they will get 20% OFF any order! :) You only have to use code THANKYOU20 at check-out to apply for this discount.

And now.... let's get to the giveaway part! :) 

One of our readers will win ECO FRIENDLY FELT CROWN in desired choice of color from Felted Kitten store!

To enter (mandatory!):

- Like Felted Kitten on Facebook and tell her you entered this giveaway (Please leave your mail address if you don't have it enabled on your profile).

Additional entries:

- Pay a visit to Felted Kitten's Etsy shop and "heart" your favorite item or the store itself! (1 entry)

- Follow Felted Kitten on Twitter (1 entry) 

- Follow us via Google Friend Conect (1 entry)

- Subscribe by mail or follow us via RSS (1 entry each)

- Follow Best Toys for Toddlers on Facebook - leave your username (1 entry)

- Share this giveaway on your FB wall and leave us a link of the post(1 entry)

- Follow @BestToddlerToys on Twitter - leave your username (1 entry)

- Share following on Twitter. Come back here and leave us link to your tweet (once a day - 1 entry):

Win handmade eco friendly felt crown at @BestToddlerToys http://tinyurl.com/5vyk5dj #worldwide #win #ece #toys #handmade #etsy #giveaway

Open worldwide! Everyone can enter no matter on which part of the globe you live!

Giveaway ends June 25th at 11:59pm. Winner will be drawn by random.org and announced on this blog as well as emailed. Winner will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be drawn. Email address must be in at least one comment or visible on your profile to win. 

Good Luck and Enjoy Playing with Your Tots! :)

Homemade Toys for Toddlers - Felt Dress Up Dolls and Toys

This will be our final post about homemade toys from felt (all without sewing, just cut and glue needed) for now at least... If you missed any of the previous posts, you can check them out here! 

For today, we'll add ideas and links to tutorials for felt dress up "paper" dolls as well as few no-sew felt dress up toys you can create for your toddler really quickly and without much time invested.

First we have this awesome felt doll set from Smile and Wave (template included):

Dress up felt set tutorial

And couple more inspiring ideas at:

The Pumpkin Pie Patch

The Life of Jeniffer Dawn

Take a look at this cute Teddy Bear Dress up set over at Love and Lollipops:

Teddy Bear Dress-up

Than check these stunning feathered masks from Twig and Toadstool:

Mardi Grass Mask Tutorial

And for end, these stunning dress-up wings created gluing fabrics and felt via Prudent Baby:

Dress-up wings tutorial

Before we end this post and finish our felt serial, quick reminder and announcement...

Reminder:

You still can enter our giveaway for a chance to win handmade educational toy from Etsy store Felty fun! You can pick which ever toy you want if you win! And your toddler will surely love it! :)

Announcement: 

We'll have another giveaway this Sunday with felt toys. This time it will be one dress up item from Etsy store Felted Kitten. 

This time, giveaway will be international so where ever you're in the world, you'll be able to join us for a chance to win new dress up accessory for your little tot! And, no... not going to spoil surprise and tell you what you can win! You can take a look at Felted Kitten shop to see all the cute stuff she makes by herself! Check back here Sunday to see for yourself and join us!

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Crafts & Inspiration: Felt Spaghetti with Meat Balls

As I was searching the web last couple days while collecting all the no-sewing felt food tutorials, I've felt inspired to make at least the simplest felt food craft of them all - Felt Spaghetti! :) 

This is a simple pictured step-by-step tutorial to make your own felt spaghetti with meat balls... and I added one simple trick for all of those who don't have any felt around the house and still would like to make this play food set for their kids... here we go...

Felt Spaghetti: 

Step 1. Get your felt sheet, ruler, pen and scissors on the table! 

Step 2. Use ruler and pen to mark where you'll cut the spaghetti. I've marked them to be 1 cm wide. Haven't had any textile pen so I've used ordinary tip felt pen... 

Step 3. Use scissors to cut the spaghetti stripes using marked dots....

Step 4. YOU'RE DONE! See? It's that simple... Serve some pasta for lunch and enjoy! Now go and make more spaghetti ;) 

Cotton T-shirt Spaghetti:

You probably have a cotton T-shirt around your house that is stained or colored or what ever misfortune thing happened so you can't ware it in public any more? Well, get it out on the table! Use all of the steps from felt spaghetti (just above) to make spaghetti out of the cotton shirt! You'll end up with something like shown on the picture (after adding our meat balls ;)

You can't really notice much of difference, right? And those are still play spaghetti! Only with something you have on hand! :)

Meat balls

Step 1. Get your supplies ready. You'll need some brown yarn (recycled) and scissors. That's it!

Step 2. I don't use cardboard rings to make yarn pom poms but you can find tutorial using it here. I simply use thing I have on hand... my own fingers! ;) Just wrap the yarn around 2 fingers.

Step 3. Gently pull the yarn off the fingers trying to keep the shape. Use another cut yarn thread to tie around the circle. 

Step 4. Splat the ball on the opposite side of the tied middle like on the picture.

Step 5. Cut out the extra yarn in circle as long as you don't  get the size you like.

Step 6. Ta-Da! You now have meat balls! :)))

It's a lunch time.... 

Here are both plates. On the left you can see felt spaghetti with meat balls and on the right is the plate with cotton shirt spaghetti with meat balls. Which one you like better?

Homemade Toys for Toddlers - Felt Play Food

Most of the toddlers I know love to pretend play with food and cooking. Felt food is something they will really like to play with and it's one of those things that doesn't need as much space as wooden play food (we still love our wooden food play sets!). We're continuing our felt homemade toys serial with no-sew felt food tutorials found around the net... Yeah, no-sewing required! ;)

At Pink and Green Mama they have some Chinese inspired cooking going on with:

Broccoli and spring rolls

Serving Pink Lemonade has a tutorial for best breakfast ever....

Sandwich 

Se7en has Mexican cousine on their menu:

Taco's

From Treasures for Tots we have lots of pasta joys:

Bow ties pasta

Tortelloni pasta

Cheese & Spinach Ravioli

Fortune cookies

FamilyFun.com is helping make a special treat for any celebration:

Cake Play set

And another version of cake plus some brownies from FaveCrafts.com:

Cake & Brownies

And, all kid's favorite comes at the end from Baby Brainstorm:

Pizza!

(PS. This felt pizza can be yours if you join our giveaway sponsored by Janice from Felty Fun whose blog is Baby Brainstorm we mentioned just now.... or some other felt toy of your choice... ENTER HERE)

Have fun cutting and creating.... 

And....

Bon apetit! :)))

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Win Toys for Toddlers! Toy of Choice from FeltyFun! CLOSED!

As we mentioned in a homemade toys for toddlers post this week, we have a tot treat giveaway this week! Our sponsor is Janice with her store Felty Fun! You can check out her store over at:

Felty Fun

I already introduced Felty Fun in short but if you missed it, here is an introduction: 

Felty fun is run by a parent who also happens to be an elementary educator - Janice, and these two things combined have resulted with an inspiration for toys in her store as well as for posts on her blog. All of the items in this store are created with fun and learning in mind: they are colorful and bright (that's fun for little ones!) and at the same time, they are wonderful for sensory play, development of fine motor skills and other early concepts and skills (color matching, sizing, counting, etc.). 


What I personally like about toys from FeltyFun store is that they are all aimed for learning basic skills for toddlers and preschoolers like fine motor skills, early math skills like sorting, matching, counting, learning about basic colors and shapes, and so many more!

I've picked 2 toys to spotlight here and the rest you'll have to check yourself ;) First toy is this button snake. We have one at home and I have to say, button snake is fantastic tool for developing fine motor skills! My daughter used her button snake first time when she was just pass 2 and it was fun for her to "button" and "unbutton" fabric pieces on the ribbon. As we all know, toddlers are yet to learn how to dress up by themselves but this toy surely can help them get a grip of it faster! :) Another thing I like about this game is that it's great game when you're on the go, visiting doctors office or traveling with toddlers. It's small enough to be easily placed in diaper bag or your purse and it doesn't make noise! Yay!

Another educational toy I like a lot from Felty Fun is this Apple counting game. And what I like the most, is the fact that it can grow with a child! At each age and stage of development, it can be used differently. For 2 year olds, it can be used as a story prompt when you explain about seasons - autumn and apple picking. At this age it can be wonderful sensory and fine motor skill tool as toddler uses pieces to form pictures on the table or a felt board. As child gets older, at age 3, you can add dice and play simple game of adding as many apples to the tree as resulted in thrown dice. Excellent for practicing social skills (taking turns in cooperative and competitive play) as well for basic math skills counting numbers 1-6. For kids 4+, this game can be turned into addition and subtraction game using 2 dice.

We have one really nice surprise for all the readers of our blog! For the time this giveaway is open (May 29th - June 11th) all of our US & CAN readers can purchase any of the toys from Felty Fun store and they will get FREE SHIPPING! :) Trust me, as these toys are pretty un-expensive, shipping is h-u-g-e addition to the price! You have to use code SHIP4FREE at check-out to apply for free shipping.

And now.... let's get to the giveaway part! :) 

One of our readers will win EDUCATIONAL TOY OF THEIR CHOICE from Felty Fun store!

To enter (mandatory!):

- Visit Felty Fun store and tell us which toy you would pick, for whom it would be and how child could use it! (Please leave your mail address if you don't have it enabled on your profile).

Bonus entries:

- Pay a visit to Janice's blog Baby Brainstorm and follow her via GFC (1 entry)

- Follow us via Google Friend Conect (1 entry)

- Subscribe by mail or follow us via RSS (1 entry each)

- Follow Best Toys for Toddlers on Facebook - leave your username (1 entry)

- Share this giveaway on your FB wall and leave us a link of the post(1 entry)

- Follow @BestToddlerToys on Twitter - leave your username (1 entry)

- Share following on Twitter. Come back here and leave us link to your tweet (once a day - 1 entry):

Win educational felt toy at @BestToddlerToys http://tinyurl.com/3bzeb4p #toddlers #preschool #win #ece #toys #handmade #etsy #giveaway

Open for US & CAN. Giveaway ends June 11th at 11:59pm. Winner will be drawn by random.org and announced on this blog as well as emailed. Winner will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be drawn. Email address must be in at least one comment or visible on your profile to win. 

Good Luck and Enjoy Playing with Your Tots! :)

Homemade Toys for Toddlers - Felt Board Play Sets DIY & Inspiration

After we covered some basic no-sew homemade felt boards you can easily create for your toddlers, it's time to look around for an inspiration how to create felt pieces for play sets to stick on those boards! :) This will be a pretty long post because I ended up finding so many really brilliant, simple to recreate ideas you can easily do yourself simply using felt sheets, scissors and, in some cases, craft glue or glue gun.

Let's start with 2 ideas from Kids Matter used for learning colors (what makes them perfect for tiny tots):

Ice cream felt play set 

(no-sewing at all and you will find template following the link!)

Colorful fish felt set 

(also includes templates)

Next we have couple easy no-sew felt projects from Serving Pink Lemonade:

Felt shapes 

(can be used for matching, collages, sorting, creating images, etc.)

Decorating Christmas tree

(link includes templates)

Robots

(used with google eyes and other small crafty items)

Frightening Faces

(perfect for Halloween!)

Than we have this easy matching and recreating from Along the way perfect for St.Patrick's Day:

Felt Shamrock Matching Game

And one more really great learning game for Halloween from the Crafting Chicks:

Halloween Jack-o-Lantern game

Learning about body parts can be really fun with this mix-and-match game from FaveCrafts.com:

Felt Face Game

Next are 2 easy cut and play felt projects from the Artful Parent:

Autumn tree

Building Flowers

Speaking of an inspiration... I want to introduce to you Etsy store with an assortment of educational toys created from felt and perfect for toddlers and preschoolers:  

Felty Fun

Felty fun is run by a parent who also happens to be an elementary educator - Janice, and these two things combined have resulted with an inspiration for toys in her store as well as for posts on her blog. All of the items in this store are created with fun and learning in mind: they are colorful and bright (that's fun for little ones!) and at the same time, they are wonderful for sensory play, development of fine motor skills and other early concepts and skills (color matching, sizing, counting, etc.).

And now for the fun part! :)

Janice has agreed to sponsor a giveaway on our blog! Yay!

You can take a look at her shop:

Felty Fun

and pick the item you would love to have!

Come back here on Sunday 

when we'll start with a giveaway and you can share with us your favorite item from the store! 

Who knows... maybe you'll be the lucky winner?! :)

Have you found any felt project you like? Will you try to make it yourself? Or you maybe have done another one you think would fit perfectly to our list? Please, share with us your ideas, posts and any other related bits of thoughts by leaving a comment! :)

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WE MOVED TO:

Best Toys for Toddlers

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