Dreaming of Felt Food

Felt food is great way to encourage pretend play

Like many moms, I get my work done after the kids are asleep. Last night I was dreaming up a new style of icing for our felt cupcakes. The first post on this blog showed our original attempts at creating a realistic cupcake shape. If you've tried making your own patterns for felt food you know it takes a few tries to get a piece looking just right. Katherine and I initially settled on one icing style and have sold several in our shop on Etsy. These cupcakes feature soft ruffles in pink and white felt.

The fun thing about cupcakes today is variety, so we're going to keep dreaming up new designs for our felt cupcakes too! Our newest style features bold swirls of felt. I still need to stitch the layers together but so far I think it looks great. I couldn't resist putting a cherry on top. This was my first try at a felt cherry!! It was tedious to stitch the pieces together, but I think it's a nice finishing touch on this piece.

If you're shopping for play food this holiday season, please consider handmade felt treats like ours. See more of our felt goodies in our shop on Etsy!

Evolution of our Felt Cupcake!

We tossed around lots of business ideas, and then we discovered felt play food. We were immediately hooked on the idea felt food and set off to try our hand at creating our own versions. Our goal was to keep our product original so we decided to create our own patterns. Not as easy to do as we thought. My first cupcake was too large, Katherine's was smaller and more along the lines of what we had in mind. My second cupcake was cute, but looked more like those great mini chocolate mouse cakes. The third attempt was too small and a bit boring.

We really wanted a realistic size and shape - easy for kids to hold. Although kids love icing the best (and that's usually all they eat), we thought a detailed cupcake wrapper was important. So we experimented a bit, and then found a process that worked for us and makes our cupcake look authentic. Our end result is fun for kids - soft, squishy, and a replica of one of their favorite foods. Plus we think it looks gorgeous with lots of ruffled felt layers of icing on top.

We used acrylic felt and fleece for our prototypes - we now have a great supply of heirloom quailty, wool blend felt that's resists pilling and will better hold up to years of fun.

This is just the beginning for us - we look to real desserts as the inspiration for our felt play food. The ideas are limitless and we hope you check us out again to see what we're baking up next!