Crafting Treasures - Adorable Ideas for Creating Handmade Play Food for Children

Nothing is more satisfying than being able to make your children's own toys. With all the recent toy recalls it might even give you peace of mind to be able to craft toys for your kids. Older children might also enjoy these crafts as well as some adults!

The first thing you will want to do is figure out which medium of crafting you will be using to create your food treasures. You can knit, crochet, sew as well as make wooden items. You might be able to use paper Mache or felting as well. It is all up to you imagination so brainstorm for ideas.

You could use your existing talents or use this craft to learn a new technique. Also look and see what supplies you might have on hand. Yarn, felt, wool roving and fabrics are all good things to start with. You can even use beads and embroidery floss to embellish your projects. Just be sure to think about what you are making and who the recipient will be! You don't want to put beads on an item for a baby for instance! You could also use all natural materials in lea of synthetics for a true tactile experience.

Next you will want to figure out what you will be making. This is the fun part! Also, just a word of warning, once you start looking for ideas it starts to become an obsession for some! Some ideas for things to make would be cookies, vegetables and fruits. You could go one step further and make sets of food. Such as breakfast items or felt sets.

Ideas for Play food

Fruits

Vegetables

Breads

Pastries

Cakes

Pies

Nachos

Sushi

Breakfast (pancakes, waffles, bacon, toast)

PB&J

Hamburgers, hot dogs, soda

Teabags

Cupcakes

Muffins

Lollipops

Candy

Noodles

Potato chips

As you can see the sky is really the limit for creating play food. Don't be afraid to experiment! If you let your kid's in on it I'm sure they will come up with dozens more good ideas too! Another idea is to scour Etsy and the internet for ideas. There is a great play food group at FlickR where you can see hundreds of ideas as well! You can find many patterns for play food on the internet but they aren't needed once you get the hang of creating things.

These items make great gifts and stocking stuffers. Also this s a nice group project as most things you will choose to make will work up fast.

You could even go as far as organizing a swap with a group. Where each person would make 1 set of items for everyone then you exchange them at the end and everyone ends up with a variety of play food.

Handmade play food are great toys for little ones and will usually bring a smile to older kid's as well. You could make them for any aged child but they are pest for smaller kids. If you want to get even fancier you could make potholders and an apron set and get a small basket to put everything in.

Kid's love to use their imaginations for play and these toys facilitate creative play. Also this is a chance for you to create truly memorable toys for your kid's. They will likely play with these things until they are worn out!