Creative Creatures: A Step-by-Step Guide to Making Your Own Creations product reviews

This is a great craft book I think for older children perhaps of the age about 8 and over as it does involve some sewing and following instructions. As my daughter is 11 she was able to use the book by herself to make some things but others I helped her with. So you could certainly use it with younger children if you helped them.

My daughter was so excited when we got the book that she wanted to get stuck into making something straight away but we didn't have any fabric so she made a mask using the idea from one of the pages in the book. She followed the instructions which she said were easy to follow for her. The pictures certainly help as they give a visual aid.

We have started our next project which is making a mobile. The instructions for this have been really clear and the project is coming along really nicely. The owl which I loved is a bit tricky with all the details such as the wings so it is taking us a while to make but I think is going to look great once finished. It is easy with the book to use the projects to create your own ideas too as we have changed the design of the owl a bit ourselves.

Another good feature of the book is that it has templates for some of the designs which will make those projects easier as you can use the templates to cut out the fabric to the right shape. I would give this book a big thumbs up and I am sure it will continue to provide hours of entertainment for my daughter which will be great on rainy days.

Donna Wilson's Creative Creatures is a fun craft book. We got a copy to review, and just flipping through the pages made my fingers itchy to start crafting. I quickly picked out several things I wanted to try making. I needed to go out and buy a few things first. I went to a material shop and bought several squares of felt in different colours and thicknesses. I also got some thread and some stuffing.

This book has several templates for the projects. I used some baking paper to trace the small squirrel fox shape and put it onto cardboard. Then I followed the instructions to make a keyring. I found that the felt I used was too thick and difficult to work with in covering the cardboard as suggested. This felt was the thinnest piece I had, so I think it would have been better not to do felt at all. However, the instructions did say felt.

In the end I cut around the cardboard so the felt was flush with the edge and added ribbon as suggested. My little fella (as my daughter called him) was very cute. My daughter was inspired by my keyring but I could not get her to make a creature like mine. Instead she had a snake with wings and a blue bird. Hers were very cute too.

The next thing I made was a felt monkey. He ended up being an ape though, as I couldn't bring myself to add the tail in the end. The pattern seemed pretty simple, but it was time consuming. The felt made him really fiddly as well. Still, I really liked how cute he came out and my daughter has been crowing to everyone who will listen about how clever I am. In fact, she said as much to the neighbour's children and talked me into making two little toys for them today.

I'm definitely going to make the glove cat and the sock puppet too next. I love that we can re-use and recycle as part of the creations. There are lots more paper craft fun to be had as well, which has really inspired us both! The banana and monkey bunting was such a cute idea for a jungle party. And I can see we will be designing our own board games in the near future too.