The Concept
The idea for Goodnight Balloon plush nightlight came from my son’s love of balloons. I’d originally imagined it as a handful of balloons.
My original material list consisted of a battery pack, LEDs (red, yellow, blue), felt (for the base), and polyfil.
The Process
Here is where I pivoted from regular balloons to a hot air balloon. I felt like the fire in a hot air balloon would look really interesting and unique in a nightlight.
Once I had an idea of what I wanted it to look like I started cutting my fabric out to match my paper cutout.
I then made a small house for my battery pack, making sure to cut out a space for the on/off switch. For ease of access, I planned to face the switch out on the underside of the basket.
My next step was to sew my fabric, for which I used the VFL’s industrial machine. Unfortunately I didn’t think to take any pictures of that process.
Once my balloon was sewed up and stuffed with Polfil, I moved on to the soldering. I collected and stripped some extra wire and got to work. I didn’t encounter any issues here (special thanks to Mallika and Anusha for their help and suggestions!). I went with golden yellow LEDs to resemble the fire from hot air balloons.
The first shot of it all starting to come together, with the LEDs in the balloon.
Once I finished off folding the felt basket to hold the battery pack, I worked on the light diffusion. The ping pong balls ended up being too big for where I wanted the lights to sit, so I opted for using a small plastic bag lightly stuffed with Polyfil (I faced the lights down, which was made much easier because the connecting wires I’d used in my circuit were a thick enough gauge to keep them in place). Likewise, the cardboard I’d cut to act as a block, was really awkward inside the balloon, so I instead went with the thick felt at the top of the bag, to block the light.
Final Product
I really enjoyed soldering the light circuits, as well as learning the secrets of the industrial sewing machine.
What challenged me most during this project was definitely the basket area, and figuring out how to make it both “plush” and structured.
Error: I carved out a foam block to seat the battery pack, but then sized my felt basket to small to fit it’s proportions. I thought foam would be a good way to add soft-ish structure.
If I had more time to work on this project I’d originally planned on using the LED wires as the basket cables, but this didn’t go as planned – the mesh cable wrap I sourced didn’t end up working. I ultimately decided there needed to be a structure to suspend the balloon above the basket, but ran out of time. I would also add more LEDs to really get that hot air balloon fire I was going for.
Overall I really had fun with this, and would love to revisit it and make it great!