Mommy and Me Book Review: Disney Princess Felt

Syd is my right-hand girl when it comes to craft book reviews, because she's as likely as I am to spend the day in a pile of craft supplies, making all the stuff. Yesterday, for instance, she completed most of her schoolwork (she's a sneaky-sneak who avoids her French homework whenever possible), and spent some time lounging over the floor heating vent with a book and a blanket, but she spent most of the day drawing comics on the computer and baking and decorating a Grinch-themed cake.

I meant to throw her outside for an hour, but it was rainy and gross and I forgot. Guess we'll try for that Vitamin D today...

To aid in the crafting, this month I actually have our big table in the playroom set up with all kinds of supplies to make ornaments. I've got rocks and paint pens, ribbon and hot glue, scrapbook paper and kite paper, glue sticks, dried leaves--all the most important ornament-making supplies.

Will has been a paper chain making machine, I've done some mini window stars, and Syd and I have painted a few rocks (because who doesn't want rocks hanging from their Christmas tree?), but the hit of the table happened when I received this Disney Princess Felt kit free from a publicist for review and surprised the kids with it.

We've done several projects from the Star Wars Felt kit over the past year (I'm actually mid-Boba Fett right now...), so both kids were able to jump right into this one with little instruction from me. They already knew how to find the labeled templates for the character they wanted to make, and how to pop them out of the cardboard (pro tip: put the templates for each character into a little plastic baggie with that character's name on it, and keep the cardboard shell that you popped the templates out of, so you'll have a way to remake them when you lose them). They already knew to fetch the chalk and scissors, and basically got themselves right to work while I sat and dawdled over which princess I wanted to make.

Syd, of course, chose Ariel:

Excuse the chaos, and the inferior lighting that these short days necessitate. Solstice is coming soon!

 I was interested to see that with her expert knowledge after having made Star Wars felt critters, she chose to simplify the project for herself by not backing and stuffing her Ariel. After all, piecing the pretty front and putting in all the details are the fun parts!

I bet that if you wanted to make the project even easier, you could glue the pieces together rather than sew them, but you'd have to be very careful about where you put the glue, as you couldn't then embroider details through it.

Here's my Belle, with all her pieces together but not yet sewn, except for the jewel in the neckline of her dress:

You piece her together with a stab stitch--

--and then the fun part is embroidering on all the details!

Later on this day, as I was stuffing my Belle and Will was sitting across from me making yet another paper chain (our tree is bounteous with them this year!), we were discussing Belle, and whether or not she had Stockholm Syndrome, and if abduction was a legitimate method of finding a life partner. I told Will that if I were Belle, I'd have been sold on that first tour--the Beast would show me his library and I'd have said, "Yep, Buddy. I'll totally marry you. Just let me know when the priest arrives, and also have all my meals brought to the library."

Will snorted with laughter, but did not disagree with my sentiment.

You can do all kinds of things with these little stuffies, and if you had younger kids, it would be super cute to just make the entire set for them to play with, or to make all the pieced fronts, not stuff them, and use them on a felt board or for quiet play. We have our own way of using all the stuffies that we make from these kits, however:

These Christmas ornaments could not be sweeter.

Now I'm off to go hang up Syd's Ariel!