Here's another fun page for you to add to your quiet book collection. This was an original idea by yours truly. Usually most of the pages I see ideas elsewhere and then adapt them. This I hadn't seen anywhere and just made it happen. It's pretty cute though. It's a zoo with cages and animals to change in and out of the cages. I've also thought about making a zoo keeper and maybe adding some water and food elements to it as well, but that can wait until later. First, let me show you how I made this page.
What you'll need:
-5 cages
- 1 page protector
- a few green bushes
- a tree
- zoo entrance sign
- pocket flap
- animals
The first and hardest part of this was creating the cages. After you have cut endless amounts of them (I cut 15 because I always make 3 sets of any page to sell to cover my costs later.), then you need to put them together like the picture shows below:
-a piece of paper
-a cut piece of your page protector, large enough for it to generously go around your cage
-on top is your cage
Then you'll take that sandwich of materials and with the cage on top you will sew along each edge of the cage. You may have to backstitch on some parts to make sure you get the whole thing sewn down. Take it off the sewing machine and carefully rip the paper away off of the back. Having the paper on the back helps give the sewing machine a little more structure to stitch through and helps prevent anything from sticking with the plastic.
When your cages are done they should look like this:
Next, you'll want to lay out your stuff in a general layout, so everything fits. This is how I have it set up:
Then you will need to cut out a strip of the back page to make a pocket for your animals. You can see how large my strip is here.
See how the animals will fit in:
Next, I went ahead and stiched on all the parts for this half of the page. I sewed on the cages, making sure to leave the tops open and making sure to backstitch a couple times on each of the top edges to make sure it will hold up to the animals be shoved in and out of them. Sew on the tree and bush. And I glued on our little saying, 'Don't Feed The Animals'.
Once you've gotten that figured out you will need to sew or glue on the top flap to cover your pocket opening.
Pin it. (I chose to have the opening at the top because I wanted to prevent any of the animals from accidentally falling out.
Add glue if you're lazy like me, or you can stitch it down.
Hold it down for a few seconds and let dry.
Now to actually add the pocket on back. You can see I just used a scrap piece of felt. This one happened to be green, another page, as you'll see, I used dark gray. Figure out what size you want your pocket to be- make sure all your animals fit.
Here you have to glue! Because you don't want your stitching to show on the front of the page! Just glue around all the sides and let dry.
Now, for the other half of the page. This side you need to also sew on the cages and bushes, like the previous side. Here's the layout. Make sure you leave room for the arch.
Cut the extra off and sew it on.
Then you need to make your sign. You can choose to use puff paints to write out 'ZOO' or you can attempt to embroider the letters on your sign. Not to shabby for my first attempts at stitching letter, I have to say.
Once you sew your sign on. All you have to do now is make your animals to fill up your zoo.
This is the best secret to making your quiet book pages look more professional and saving you tons of time of creating all these animals by hand. To see how I made these zoo animals along with a lot of other figures see my tutorial here.
Then fill up your zoo and let your kids have a blast! Why not follow it up with a trip to the zoo?!
Happy Crafting and God Bless!
Heather Joy
