Thursday, December 1, 2011

All For the Sake of Quiet

In the beginning of October, I had a friend of mine who decided to put together a group of people who were interested in making a quiet book. We all wanted quiet books to use in church, doctor's offices and wherever you might need a few moments of silence with the kids. We all wanted pages too, that had a religious theme. 
The idea behind a group effort was that it's easier to produce multiples of the same page than designing and making a template and whatnot for that same number of pages. Plus a bonus of the group effort is that it's a little more motivating to finish it when you have other people depending on you (Otherwise I probably would only have one page down still)!
 I decided to sign up (much to John's chagrin) and then the list of people who were interested kept growing and growing until, in the end, there were 28 of us! Yikes! It was such a huge project. We all finished our pages the end of October, just before Halloween. It was a tight deadline, and I think most of us (me included) were up most of the night before the deadline. Well after making some tweaks of my own to some pages and making a super fabulous cover for my books (I decided to divide my pages into two separate books since the stack was about 10 inches tall by itself). I now am proud to present to you the Crawford Family Quiet Book (s):
Here is the cover. I used a black purse handle and grosgrain ribbon to attach it. I also chose an outdoor canvas hoping that it would hold up better to the "elements."
I wanted a zipper to help hold all the little pieces in and basically designed it out of my head, but thinking of the classic CD cases from back in the day (that was so, like, 2000).
I lined it was a fabulous black and white polka-dot print and attached each page with grommets and then the metal rings that you can open and close freely. Where the rings are, I used button holes for reinforcement. I also used a two-way separating zipper so the book can open up completely flat.
This is my first page that has a little "This book belongs to" tag on top of a pocket for miscellaneous goods.
 And this was my other page that I was in charge of. I copied it from someone else. Oh yes, and on each page, we asked people to put a scripture reference, so older kids can look up what story each page is in reference to. So this is Jonah and the whale with a lift-a-flap.
Jonah can be seen through the clear vinyl.
 But you can also take him out and play with him.
 This one is a "Put on the Armor of God," and has the pieces that you can dress the little guy in the armor of God. Then there is a pocket where you can store the pieces.
 Here is a Noah's Ark with the animals. The bottom half of the boat serves as a pocket for the animals and for Noah.
 This is a tic-tac-Temple board, all attached with velcro.
 On the bottom, this one says, "I'm going there someday." The activity is that you can detach and re-attach each of the flowers, attached with a snap, a button and velcro.
 Kids can learn how to braid hair with this page, it says, "Getting ready for Church."
 This page represents the story of Joseph in Egypt with the Coat of Many colors, each color is attached with velcro.
 Kids can learn how to tie their church shoes.
 Go BYU football! If that's not religious, I'm not sure what is! The football is also a pocket for the puzzle pieces.
 This page has a little slit in the mouth where you can put the good things to eat.
 All the pieces are stored inside, and removed through the zipper at the bottom.
 This is a little "wagon" color wheel and says, "Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel," a song about the pioneers coming west to settle in SLC.
 The kids can match up the different colors. The top of the wheel is also a pocket to hold the different colored wedges.
 The is the "Tower of Babel" and the kids can "weave" the tower.
 In case you didn't know what I meant by weaving...
 This a double page and it's a matching game to put the Latter-Day Prophets in the correct order.
 Each of the cards has a picture of a Prophet and has the number on the back.
 This is a "creation" page and you lift each flap to learn what was created on each day.
 I think I need to add the scripture reference on this one still!

Onto book number two! This book was made in the exact same way, it just has a different pattern on the outside, and I also carried the polka-dots onto the zippered part.
 This page is a magnetic matching game that has "sacrament Manners" The little red wand is the magnet that you can move all the pieces around to match them up.
 This is another double page that has a mailbox that you can open up and put notes insides plus the flag can move up and down.
 The matching page holds crayons, a pencil and 3 x 5 cards to write notes on.
 This is a feelings page, and you can't really tell in the picture but the square on the left is a mirror and kids can practice making the faces that you see. The blue square is a pocket to hold all the faces.
 The "On the Road to Church"page has a little orange car that you can "drive" along the road.
 This is another lift-the flap page.
 BUT under each window there is a picture window where you can put the pictures of your family members. See Ethan and Charlotte?
 Then I put John and I, Lincoln and our dog, Sadie.
 This is a magnetic fishing page where you can practice the "fishers of men" story and catch the fish with a magnetic fishing line and put them in your boat. The water on the bottom is a pocket for the fish.
 This is a hide-and-seek page where kids can "find the lost sheep," each bush is a little pocket for the sheep to hide.
 This is the story of Ammon and the bad guys' arms come off with snaps!
 This is a build a Temple page, complete with an Angel Moroni on top!
 This is a counting/numbers/tithing page where kids can velcro the gold coins to the piggy bank and the tithing envelope.
 This page kids can match the different shapes.
 This is the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and kids can remove the little apples and put them in the basket.
 This is the a little maze picture where kids need to move the beads from place to place and remember to "choose the right."
 So that's 30 pages in total! So much fun for the kids, right? And so very much work! I'm so excited to give it to our kids for Christmas and I'm expecting perfectly behaved children in Sacrament Meeting from now on. Time to go wrap it up and hide it under the Christmas Tree!

17 comments:

Hayley said...

Oh how I love your covers.I am totally going to try and carbon copy them. Fabulous job! And thanks being apart of our group.

liz said...

that is amazing. sure do all the cool stuff after the fullers move.

brit said...

Good golley that looked like tons and tons of work. We teach sunbeams and I can seem them LOVING something like that. Your kiddos are lucky.

amy said...

I want to be your kid. Bad.

Tara T said...

wow. I'm in love with the cover. we need to talk and you can give me pointers :)

love bug momma said...

Can i get patterns or something? I really need these! How are the pages made

Unknown said...

Wow, beautiful books!! I absolutely love the covers. Did you line them with something to make them stiff?

Tara said...

@Louise-Marie Binedell. Yep! I lined them with a material called Pellon which comes in various levels of thickness/stiffness. I chose one that was pretty sturdy, but you can still bend the pages if you try.

Debby said...

Please explain how you did the cover. Did you buy a binder and put the colored fabric on top or was it already like that? If you put the fabric on it, how did you attach it to be durable? Did you use gromets for the pages?
I love this! Thank you for posting it.

Unknown said...

Hi, what is the size of your pages?

Tara said...

They are 10x10 inches.

Sharon Hodges said...

Please tell you sell these somewhere like Etsy!!! I need to buy a couple for my grandchildren!! And the BYU football page is the BEST!!!!! Please let me know if you have some for sale!!!

Tara said...

Sorry, Sharon, this is a one hit wonder! We made it as a group though and it went so much smoother!

stlkmjn said...

Thanks so much for sharing this! Do you by chance have a step-by-step tutorial of how you sewed/crafted the two book covers with zipper? And when your group made the pages, did you fuse two felt pages together with Pellon? If not, how? Many thanks, and excellent work!

Tara said...

I did assemble these with a 10x10 sheet of thicker Pellon in between the pages and sewed around the outside for stability. I think I have a quick one that I wrote up for a friend, I'm not sure if it's helpful, but I can pass along the instructions I sent to her.

Tara said...

See below!

stlkmjn said...

Thank you so much for your feedback! However, I do not see link/attachment referred to. Can you please re-post? Or send to me at ironandhoney@gmail.com? Many thanks, Tara!