I have a huge to do list of the things I hope to accomplish before the new baby gets here. One of the big ones is that I’ve wanted to make busy bags for Evie. Things that are simple enough that she can keep herself entertained if I have my hands full and can’t get to her right away.
I had some ideas stashed away on Pinterest, but hadn’t gotten around to any of them. Then I got invited to participate in a toddler busy bag swap. It was perfect. I’d get 10 activities, and I’d only have to come up with one project.

I liked the ideas on this blog, and decided to do the color wheel because I thought Evie would really like it a lot. She’s very into sorting and matching things, so I thought this would be perfect.

I needed to make 11 of the color wheels, (10 for the swap, and 1 for Evie) so I needed 88 clothespins. I checked Hobby Lobby and a Dollar Store, but it was cheapest to just order them off Amazon.

I deviated slightly from the one in the photo and did pink instead of black. I just used some Martha Stewart craft paint that I had and painted the tips of the clothespins. The yellow, pink, orange, and brown all required multiple coats to really cover them. This was by far the most time consuming part, I did it over the course of several days. Evie would either sit at the table with me and paint or play Play Dough.

Josh helped with the circle part. He figured out the angles to draw the lines, and did all of those first before we cut out the circles. I bought a pad of super heavyweight craft paper from Target for the circles, it was the Kid Made Modern brand. It seemed like it would hold up much better than a regular cardstock. After all the lines were drawn, Josh cut them all out with a circle cutter. We made them about 7 inches, which seemed like a good size for toddler hands.

Josh had the idea to do make a template for painting on the circles, which was a brilliant idea and helped things move along quickly. I used a circle punch on some of the leftover paper and roughly cut it to fit the section of the circle. I made one for each color, because inevitably paint got on the back a little. Pushing the template down really hard and pulling it up as straight as possible, without touching the sides to the paper helped create neater circles. If there was a little smudge, I just fixed it up as much as possible with the paintbrush. It really wasn’t too noticeable.

Next all I had to do was package them up. I have a stash of toys and activities for Evie in the closet, so I immediately stashed it away without letting her play with it. I think it turned out pretty well, and hopefully it will keep her entertained. We had the busy bag swap yesterday and half of the bags went straight into the closet. Some of them are more craft activities that I think she will need help with, so we will do those together.

I still have a few more projects I want to assemble for her. ETA 53 days…

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