Felt (Flannel) Boards – Cheap, Easy DIY Travel Games That Are Great for Travel with Kids

When searching for new travel games to keep our two young children busy, we are frequently greeted with the advice that we should bring new toys. In fact, we’ve given out that advice ourselves – more than once! But new toys = more money and since travel is already usually an expensive proposition, this just adds insult to injury.

But what if I told you there was a super lightweight toy that cost next to nothing to make, was super easy to boot and was {drum roll, please!} washable?  Um, yeah, but I’m not crafty we hear you protest. That’s okay – we’re not either! Flannel boards (sometimes called felt boards) have got to be the easiest thing in the world to make and require basically no crafting skills. If you can iron, cut and glue, you’re golden! So let’s get started.

 

Iron your flannel if it’s wrinkled.  Cut out a piece of cardboard that suits your child’s lap.  Then, lay the cardboard on your flannel and cut around it, leaving about an extra inch or two all around.  You don’t need to measure and straight-ish lines are more than good enough.  I decided to add a felt pocket on the back to hold the pieces.  So I wrapped the top further down to make sure that the whole thing would be covered when I added the pocket.  It’s totally up to you if you want to add that step (or just use a gallon sized Ziploc bag to store your sets in).  Then, just wrap the flannel over the cardboard and hot glue (or duct tape) down.  Voila!  You have now created a flannel board.

To add a pocket, use your glue gun to hot glue around the edges of a piece of felt, leaving enough slack that it forms a pocket like so:

Next, you’ll need some pieces to play with. Choose some images your child will enjoy. Thanks to the internet, there’s pretty much no limit to what you could go with. We’ve made sets of Angry Birds, Strawberry Shortcake, Cars, Hello Kitty, Care Bears and more.  (If you check out how much these felt board sets would cost you to buy, we think you’ll see why we’ve been motivated to make them ourselves).  Grab a bunch of kitchen images and your child can spend that next flight being the new Iron Chef. Have a car enthusiast? There’s no shortage. Budding princess? There’s loads of images that would work. Print your chosen images onto the iron-on-transfer sheets following the instructions.  Iron them onto the felt. (We’ve used the cotton setting just like it said in the instructions despite the felt being polyester. It’s never melted/singed). The transfers take a little patience, but if you follow the instructions they should work out great.  One thing we do differently is to ignore the advice about not using an ironing board.  Heck – it’s our ironing board’s only chance of being used!  We find it a convenient height, so we just use a wooden cutting board so that the surface you push against is good and hard.  It’s always worked well.  Make sure you push down and don’t slide the iron from side to side – doing that can smear the image.

When the felt has cooled, slooowly peel back the paper backing.  If it won’t come off easily, or if the image still seems to be stuck to the backing – iron some more.

Then, just cut out your pieces and you’re ready to play!  So, there you have it. A super cheap, lightweight, easy to make at home endless supply of new toys that will match your child’s changing passions and is washable to boot!

We keep ours, er, our children’s stored in zip loc bags, but then…we keep everything stored in zip loc bags!  They do really keep the pieces organized and contained easily and the pocket gives you an easy place to keep different sets.

Made some of these yourself? We’d love to see your creations!  Happy travels!