The other day I stumbled onto one new crafting blog. Before I knew it I had subscribed to it and thirty-three others, and for the past few days my head has been a-buzz with fun ideas.
One of my favorites by far is felt food.
I know! How cheesy right? (Pun intended.) But seriously, check some of it out. This etsy seller has eggs, mushrooms, and even a complete "squid dinner." Here's a felt s'more, a plate of felt ravioli, and an entire felt Sunday breakfast. Aren't they just so cute you want to eat them up? (Again, intentional.)
But what does one do with felt food? A majority of the people making it are advertising it as a children's toy. Unfortunately, I don't know any children that are of an age to be interested. Sweet Sister would give me a funny look and go back to her Hannah Montana. Cutie Niece was way into pretend food six months ago, but the last time we visited she was all about Barbies. She didn't offer me a single plastic Oreo.
However, just as I was despairing of my chance to take part in the felt food buffet, I found these adorable felt fortune cookies. While they are clearly still felt food, I decided they're grown-up enough that my girlies might enjoy them. And I always try to send a little treat at Valentine's Day anyway, so voila!
There are several patterns for making felt fortune cookies. I got ideas from Martha Stewart and from this pattern on CraftSanity, and then tweaked a little.
I cut out four inch circles of felt, and folded them up as shown in the Martha article linked above. Instead of relying on wire to hold the shape, I just put a little stitch in where the tips of the cookie meet. (If you use matching thread you can even be pretty sloppy about it.) I slipped a little fortune in each one, filled them with cherry jelly beans, and packaged them up in red Chinese take-out boxes. Yay!
As I was looking for patterns, I also found these kitty-toy fortune cookies that are stuffed with catnip. I had more felt than I needed for the girls' cookies, so I decided to make some toys for our friends' cats, as well.
The only think I did differently for the cat toys was to stuff them with catnip instead of jelly beans, and to sew up the edge (so the catnip doesn't fall out, of course). I used a blanket stitch to make it pretty. (See futuregirl's excellent tutorial.)
I can't pretend these got the felt food bug out of my system, but maybe my hunger will be sated for a little bit. Then again, maybe not....
(Yes, yes...I made a felt fried egg. Just don't ask me what I'm going to do with it.)
