busy book: memory flip

inspired, in part, by the construction of this game, i designed this “memory flip” page.  for the page for my nephews, i just made 9 squares and used photos of each of the cousins’ faces.  i made the middle square a heart since 9 is an odd number.

i sewed through the elastic when attaching the squares to the elastic and that means that the elastic twists whenever you flip the square.  i thought that might eventually lead to a problem (if a square gets twisted too many times in the same direction, for instance), so for the second page, i tried something a little different.

first of all, i used 16 slightly smaller squares (this may be a bit too crowded…) and i used a round elastic instead of flat.  then, i left a gap on either side of the elastic when stitching the fronts to the backs so that the squares could rotate freely.

i stitched down the elastic to the background between each square.  i used another sheet of printable fabric to make the faces of faraway family members.  if you’d like to re-create this page more simply, you could easily stitch a felt shape (like a heart or a star) onto a square of felt instead of using the photo fabric.  if i were making the page a third time, i might try leaving a little extra wiggle room on the elastic to allow more room for flipping the square over.  if you’re looking for a source of round elastic, check out multi-packs of inexpensive elastic headbands.  you might even find fun colors!

again, a rather fiddly page due to the skinny borders around each photo, but i do love the results!