How many of you have ever wanted to make a quiet book for your kids??? Ok, now how many of you have supplies to make that quiet book? Out of you ladies who have supplies, I know that some of you have started and never finished your quiet books. I am in the same boat! I have wanted to make one since before my almost 4 year old was born. I looked up patterns and made templates and planned it all out. However, I still have no quiet book to show for it.
Since baby number 3 is due in the middle of October, I figure I’ve got 8 weeks to finally finish something I started years ago. I know that is a pretty ambitious goal, especially since I might be way out of my league with the inspiration I’ve chosen, but I have a group of friends who want to finish theirs too and we are getting together weekly to help motivate and inspire each other. Yay! I have thought about nothing else for the last 3 weeks.
Here is where YOU can get involved. I plan on making a 2 page spread every week. As I go, I will make patterns for the pages I create so it will be easy for you and I to re-create them! This is a huge endeavor for me and I hope you love it just as much as I do. I’ve spent at least a month scouring the internet for the best quiet book ideas and I’ve mixed and matched and made some of my own and compiled what I think is the ultimate quiet book. Keep in mind that most of these pages come from other people’s ideas. I will link to my inspiration, but I hope to put my own spin on every page and make this book truly unique.
So here they are in all their glory… or not so much. These are just templates that I will use to create my own patterns. There was a lot of cutting and pasting and taking from one and adding to another. I hope you can see how awesome it will really look when I link to the inspiration page.
This one is a mix and match of lots of people’s ideas to make my own design. There will be snaps and magnets and a zipper crocodile mouth to eat the monkeys. The snake will be a weaving toy and the rain will zip out of the clouds. I really need to draft a better looking croc. This one is pretty sad I know. I’ve done the best with my limited computer animation skills. I got the snake and chameleon ideas from my favorite Russian blogger Tanya. Here is the specific page. See all her awesome work here. I think she sells her books if you are interested, but it’s hard to tell through my rough google translation.
Here you have your pretty basic velcro alphabet page. I am excited about the place to create words as my son is starting to read. As suggested by my mother-in-law, I will be adding a pocket with extra vowels and t’s and such to make bigger words. I will be using my Cricut to cut out the letters which I’m really excited about. Who wants to cut all those out by hand???
This might be my favorite page. I want my garden page to look pretty close to this Russian post here. There are many like it on a variety of Russian blogs. I’m sure Tanya does one, but it’s so hard to navigate and find them that I used this one instead. The farmer page I like to think is mostly my own. I found the animal heads on a free clipart website. The farmer as well as the animals will have lift up heads to feed them through a button hole underneath. There is a zipper at the bottom to get all the food back out. The farmer arm will probably be jointed so he can actually feed them. My son is very excited to feed the animals and feed flowers to the farmer.
This is a pretty basic building and colors page. I got the rainbow straight from Tayna at her other blog and the house from, you guessed it, another Russian blog. I love that whole book for a younger child. Maybe 1? When I make one for Claira, some of those pages will definitely be included. I’ll embellish these a little more and see where they go from here.
When I saw the cute little alien colors page on this Russian site, I knew it would have to be included. I love love love this idea of matching colored aliens to their spaceships. Then there is this awesome zippered space ship that looks like it’s blasting off as you unzip it. This is completely Stephanie’s page and she even has a pattern already for you. I will try to add my own touch to mine, but I don’t see a lot of room for improvement. She has so many patterns for quiet books. Check her out. You won’t regret it!
This page will be so fun! When I mentioned a quiet book to my husband he immediately said we needed a fishing page. I agreed wholeheartedly and saw a bunch of really cute pages. I will use inspiration from Tanya but all the fish and coral and details will be pretty much from my head.
Last but not least will be the castle and knight page. I’m working on a good knight with removable armor and arms that move to fight the dragon. I say dragon because one will come out of the castle attached to a string. Check out Tanya’s castle that I’m using to see how truly awesome it is. I just can’t get enough of her stuff. She’s pretty much amazing. I’m not very excited to figure out how to sew it all together but hey, the finished product will be worth it!
Please remember that these are rough sketches and that the finished product should be much more impressive and unique. I hope you follow along with my adventure and finish a quiet book of your own in the near future!