Simple Homemade Gifts: Child’s Felt Fishing Lake
Thanks to Jody, a LHL Reader, for this great tutorial!
I always love a good homemade Christmas gift and when my son said he would like a lake for Christmas, well, it was either start digging or get a little creative!
I wanted to make something that could easily be moved from room to room, could be folded up small to store when he’s not using it, and it had to fit into our tiny budget. I decided to make the lake from felt.
I used a few pieces of blue for the water, green for the grass on the bank, and grey to make some stones around the edges. The felt I bought cost 29 cents per piece at a local craft store. I cut wavy edges on the blue pieces to resemble ripples on the water and cut the grey into random shapes for rocks and stones. Then I laid it all out with the green around the edges and glued it all together with Tacky Glue. I also added some foam stickers in the shapes of fish, bubbles, frogs, and bugs.
My kids had some magnetic fishing poles and fish, but you could easily make fishing poles from wood dowels, string and magnets. Fish are also fun and simple to make. Just cut some scrap fabric in fish shapes, sew a magnet to the fabric (on what will be the inside of the fish) where the mouth would be, and sew the 2 pieces of fabric together leaving about a 2 inch opening. Stuff the fish, sew the opening closed, and make some more! You can never have too many fish in your lake!
We like to set up our little tent in the living room, lay out the lake, build our campfire (also made of felt!), and spend a Winter afternoon camping, fishing, and cooking our fish over the “fire”! It’s such a simple and inexpensive toy and if your kids are like mine, those are the ones they love the best!
I hope you enjoy the project and thank you Little House Living for letting me share!
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