A cute gift idea for kids

If you are looking for a nice and fairly easy gift idea for kids this Christmas, you might like to check out this link:  Car Caddy.  It's a little caddy for taking the small Matchbox®-type cars along.  You know how kids love to take them along in the car, or to Grandma's, etc.  My grandkids will often stuff their pockets full of them.  This caddy will hold 8 to 10 cars, depending on how large you make the pockets.  I made 3 of these recently and was quite pleased with how they turned out.

This photo shows the back of one caddy and the front of the other.

This shows the inside of the open caddy.  A "race track" on one side, and pockets for cars on the other.  You can see a few cars peeking out of the pockets.

If you try these, you will want to read the tutorial and study the pictures carefully before proceeding.  One need not use a pizza box for this project.  Any sturdy cardboard will do (I used corrugated because that was all I had of the right size), and what you need is 2 (two)  9-inch squares of it.   Similarly, you need not cut 10 x 20-inch pieces of felt and then cut them in half.  Just cut 4 (four) 10-inch squares of felt.   If you are like me, just reading instructions doesn't quite do it for you (I am the same with commercial sewing patterns); you need to look carefully at the pictures as well.

Also, I should add that I didn't do the stitching around the edges of these as the tutorial shows.  I skipped that part because the cardboard is securely enclosed by machine stitching, and I felt the outer stitching just wasn't necessary.

This weekend I was concentrating on felt projects during a craft-along hosted by Genuine Mudpie.  I didn't really have a lot of free time this weekend, but wanted to join in on this, so I set aside a few hours to craft.  In addition to these car caddies, I also made a bunch (not sure how many) of felt strawberries,

and cut out the pieces for more felt food.  All of these will be Christmas gifts, so I hope the recipients (or their moms) don't look too closely at my Christmas blog!