For any of you that have a flannel board and enjoy making story and play sets to go on it I’ve got a little tip for you.

Buy 15 inch circle non-gauze milk filters, a box of 100 costs about $15 including shipping. You can get them here.

Trim them to 8.5×11 inches.

I use my quilting square and a sharpie to make my rectangle

Then cut them out. I usually hold 2 or 3 together and cut them all out at the same time, or use my rotary cutter to cut through several sheets at once.

Run them through your printer.

Cut out the pieces. They stick right to flannel, felt, fleece, and each other!

I got these awesome printable shapes from MrPrintables.com, you can download your own here.

I have also printed out just the outline and then colored it in with crayons, colored pencils, and markers, they all work really well.

These are thin for easy storage, and they are super durable. I have made several sets for my girls and they play with them a lot, I have yet to have one of them tear.

I’ve been wanting to make a flannel board for my girls for a few months now, but I was having a hard time deciding how I was going to do it. I started doing some research and found lots of different ways to make flannel boards, you can glue the flannel to cardboard, foam display boards that you find at the craft store, plywood, pretty much anything really. But the one I really liked I found here, it’s a really great tutorial on how to make your own flannel board on the back of a dry erase board, so you have the flannel board on one side and a magnetic, dry erase board on the other side. It took me a long time to find a dry erase board that I liked, but I finally found one on clearance at Walmart for $4.00. I was really excited! I got started right away and this project only took about a half hour from start to finish.
This is what my finished product looks like:

 As you can see, I chose to use a lighter blue flannel. Also, I didn’t add the ribbon and flowers. I might add ribbon at some point, but for now it’s just very simple. I did forget to fold my fabric over on the edges, so it’s already starting to fray, I need to find a way to fix that.

And this is the dry erase board side. This board is 23″x17″. I originally wanted to buy one that was about twice this size, and I’m so glad that I didn’t. This board is the perfect size, doesn’t take up too much room and is completely portable. I’ve already made a couple of stories for it, based on two of our favorite books, (I’ll post about those later) and it’s a big hit! My girls beg for me to tell them stories on the flannel board, and they have the stories nearly memorized and like to tell them to each other. I need to make a few more stories, I just have to decide what to do next…