Quiet Book

Good News Minute: Alex has gotten a job!!!! He will be working for a company called Casa Latino. Their office is located in downtown Cele.bration and it will be about 3 hours every morning, but hes getting paid pretty well. And, that also gives him the opportunity to work somewhere else after class. He's had two other great interviews and he will hear from both of them this week. We are keeping our fingers crossed for Marr.iott!!!

On the other hand, I have not heard back from anyone about interviews and I haven't heard from the one place I did get an interview with (which was almost three weeks ago) :( So much for that college degree, Huh?! SOOOOO, I have decided to try and see if I can possibly work from home creating cutesy things for kids!!

I would like your guyses honest opinions on these too...

One of my creations that I absolutely love is the Quiet Book I made for little A. I have made a total of two of these. One for Avery and a woman I used to work with bought one from me for her grand-daughter. Both were personalized. Here are some pictures of Avery's; unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to get pictures of the other one so I'll just have to tell you a little about each of the pages.

Here's the cover. On the other one I made I put her name on the inside of the cover.

Alex wanted Avery to have a sports page in his book, so on this one there are different balls that are connected to ribbons (so they dont come off the page) and the activity is to put the balls in/out of the bucket. It can als be used when Avery gets a little older to recognize different kinds of balls and their names.

This is a fun page for Avery right now... it is basically just a variety of beads on thin ribbon attached to the page. He can slide them back and forth, count the number of beads on each row and also recognize the different colored beads.

On this one I took the picture without the actual shapes attached - so, the attachable pieces are made of felt and on the page the shape is outlined with the name of the shape written in. On the other book that I made I put the names inside the shapes in English and Spanish.

This is one of my favorite pages. The page has a flower pot and the flowers are button on - so the center of the flower is a button and the actual flower has a button hole in its middle and they detach. I also did this page on the other book that I made and that one actually turned out better than this one because I made the flowers reversible, so she had four different style flowers.

I love, love, love this page too!! So I made the page look like it had a cheese pizza on it and then I created three different types of toppings - pepperoni, onions, and peppers! So, Avery can create a pizza with which ever of the toppings he wants. Another option could be making a hamburger, or ice cream cone.This one is less of an activity and more for just the different kind of textures. The kids are made out of felt, the eyes are button and the scales are sequines that are tied on with embroidery floss. This is definitely a page that is great for smaller children.I hate to keep saying it, but I love this page!! I put this one in both books - the ladybug's spots detach - they are snap on/off. This can be done with really any other animal that has spots - cow, giraffe, etc.This is Avery's counting page. I love the pyramid and that they are sort of color coded, though that wouldn't be necessary it's simpler. This page was in both books I made but for the other one I did the pyramid and I wrote out the numbers in English and Spanish on either side of the row. In Avery's book the color page is pretty simple because I was in hurry to finish it. In the other book that I made I did the colors page similar to the shapes page but wrote the colors in English and Spanish instead of the name of the shape. So, the page could really be done either way!This is the last page in Avery's book. I didn't write a caption, but I do think it needs one. This activity is a puzzle of the airplane and two clouds. As you can see, the Airplane is traced and each piece of the puzzle is a different color. I also did a puzzle in the other book that I made, but her's was a little more difficult because of her age. The puzzle was a large castle, with 13-15 pieces in four different colors.

Both books also had pockets on the two inside covers, great for storing book pieces, stickers, crayons/markers, small spiral paper, etc. I made a couple pages different for the other book because I was making it for a little girl and she was bit older than Avery.

The mother wanted at least one page having to do with bible stories, so I made two. One page was a Noah's ark and on the actual page I put a boat with an open top and ramp. I found some cute animal buttons and decided I would do a two-by-two activity. One animal was attached to the page while it's match would fasten next to it or be stored inside the boat. The other bible page I made was about the Creation. On the page I put a blue circle of felt, and tied a couple of animals to ribbon and attached them on the sides of the circle. I made green felt pieces for land and a velcro sun/moon at the top of the page.

Other pages I did for her were ABC's, where she would match a letter to the object whose name began with that letter; and I also did a tic/tac/toe page for her - a simple game that she could play with parent, sibling or friend.

So, I am thinking about going out and seeing if there are little boutiques that would display a couple of my books and maybe some business cards for a small portion of each one I sell, I was also thinking of posting them on ebay, etsy or something like that.... I am also thinking about doing a few other things such as hooded towels & bath mitts, hair bows, and maybe some of those "wellness bags."

Please tell me what you think. Will these things sell, the books in particular? What do you think they are worth? What's your advice on marketing them? Do you think I could also target child care centers? Any and all comments are welcome!! Thanks everyone!