Felt Circles Lampshade

I'm not the most adventurous when it comes to buying key items for my home.  I tend to stick to plain colours and that often means white.  Some may think that's a bit boring but it means it's always easy to change a few bits and pieces and update a look quite easily.

I was looking for a new lampshade and couldn't find much that I liked that didn't cost a fortune so opted for this large white one - yep, creature of habit!  Nothing wrong with it though....I like the shape and size and it does the job perfectly well.

But just to add a little bit of something to it I thought I would add some colourful felt circles.....random sizes and colours all stitched together in one big chain and then draped around the light shade. 
 

It's now hanging in our playroom and ties in well with the spotty pictures and colourful stripy rug. And the great thing is that if I get fed up with this, it's easy to change it again to something else.

Simple!

Colour and number play mat

Using buttons to sort and match colours

My little one is just beginning to talk about colours and knows some colour names, although is not yet applying them appropriately, instead he usually calls everything green!


However, he is very good at colour matching so I've made this play mat so he can collect and sort coloured objects and in time he will be able to name them correctly too.

He loves playing with buttons as most little ones do and this selection of different shapes, colours, tones and sizes is perfect for lots of sorting activities.

You could also try a random selection of bits from around the house and put them together in a little basket, like this.....

Provide a selection of colourful objects

Sort the objects onto the appropriate coloured square

So that's one side of the mat but what about the reverse side?  

It seemed a shame to have just a plain backing on it so I thought some numbers might be nice to provide counting opportunities.

I cut and stitched numbers 1-5, each in their own box so we can count out objects.  

In the photographs you will see we used discs for counting but you could easily use buttons, cars, shells, pom poms etc, whatever you like!

We used discs for counting but you could
use shells, buttons, pom poms,
 cars....anything!

To make the mat I cut and stitched colourful scraps cut into squares to make a mat roughly A3 size and then cut a large plain piece for the back.

Onto the plain piece I stitched some ric rac ribbon to divide the mat into 5 sections and then appliqued some bright numbers.




To complete the mat, stitch right sides together, turn through and slip stitch the opening closed.