If you answered yes to any of the questions above.. COOL DOG(S) is the perfect companion for you!
The idea of COOL DOG(S) was born from the need that young adults have for companionship, and my own love for trinkets and cute plush.
The user would purchase a Blind Box (A blind box is a sealed package that contains a random item, making the contents a mystery until opened. Blind boxes are a popular way to collect toys, and they can add an element of surprise and excitement to the unboxing experience. ) in order to get 1 of 5 DOGS. Each dog comes with a different light up body part and accessory.
This is the pink dog, Marty. He loves sports and skateboarding, so his accessorizes would revolve around headbands, sunglasses, and helmets. This Marty came with a headband and light up nose! He had a special talent for finding your hidden food.
The process started with sketching, and figuring out what I wanted out of the materials. While going to the fabric store, I decided to dye my fabric to get the color that I wanted.
MATERIALS: Ralph Lauren Fabric, Pink Dye, and Felt
I did a battery pack with two changing color lights! There are no active photos of me soldering this battery pack, due to stress during the time of soldering, but check out this blog post if you are interested in more! https://wordpress.com/post/makingstudio.blog/48069
Each individual COOL DOG would be a unique color and breed. I ran into some roadblocks with this project, with the biggest one being the fact that my fabric was too thick for embroidery.
Here are some things I would do for the next prototype:
Here is my completed Ram Plush Light. I’m so happy with the outcome!
I did this ram to have an item that reminds of Iceland. I wanted it to look good be an aesthetic item in your house. I wanted it to be clean and minimalistic. My target users are people that just moved to the city from a small town. I wanted to embody the feeling of warmness when the ram’s body lights up.
Materials
Faux Fur
Vinyl
Zipper
Stuffing
Velcro
3D filament
4 LED lights
Battery Pack
Electric wire
Needle and thread
Sewing Machine
Soldering Equipment
Brown paper
Pen
Scissors
Journey
My biggest challenge for this project was doing the head. I have never sewn a head before and I had to do a lot of research to learn how to make one. I tried finding similar plushes to see how they did the head and it just came out a bit weird.
I have never attached a 3d printed item to a soft material and I found out that there were many ways to do it. I decided to use velcro for this project.
If I would do this again I would probably sew the horns to the rams head, I would also change the horns to a more neutral cream brown color. I would also make the feet a bit larger (make the cylinders wider). Lastly I would sew a bit more heads to get the perfect shape.
Process
I started sketching out shapes of brown paper, cut them out, and traced them to the fabric making sure there was a bit of seam allowence. Then I hand sewed them together.
I did the body 2 times because when I sewed the feet to the stomach it was kind of akward so I redid the stomach shape and handsewed it together again. I wanted to have a zipper because I wanted to be able to switch out batteries easily.
To do the feet I cut out 4 circles and 4 rectangles and sewed the rectangle and circle together to make cylinders.
I did the head 3 times because I was never happy with it. First it was a very akward shape and the second one was too round and big. For the third one I cut out egg shaped brown paper and glued them together to see if the shape makes sense. The third one turned out perfect!
Here’s my plush night light The Cube! The inspiration originates from Rubik’s Cube that often features a highly geometric, structured shape and interesting variations in color.
The Cube with different environmental lighting:
The target user is for myself and the design is meant to be a tool that reminds me of the juxtaposition of material softness and fixed geometry. It is supposed to be a fun toy to show the contrast. It is a light that seduces the audience to pause, observe, and meditate about abstract qualities.
Materials include Superfine 4-Way Stretch Net Fabric Nylon Spandex Power Mesh, cotton, LEDs (red, yellow, blue, white, green), 4.5v battery pack, resistors (100ohm, 150ohm).
Project Progress
Something New: I learned to connect multiple colored LEDs to the same power source, choosing varying resistors per color and
Challenge: It turned out to be very difficult to sew a real-looking ball without breaking it in multiple pieces. The resistor requirement of green LED turned out to be quite different from red and yellow, and the green color did not turn out to be super visible.
Surprise: The huge chunk of combined wires really worked!
If Had More Time
I will try figuring out a way to make better-looking balls and a much more diverse selection of surface fabrics in combination with different colored LEDs inside in order to create more complicated textures and lighting experiences.
But reflecting on the working process, I realized the best way to curate perfectly round balls is by just using ping pong balls, and I would have put more attention into the wrapping materials.
Process Images (so sorry I forgot to take the photos of me wrapping cotton &mesh onto the LED-filled ping pong balls and sewing them)
Here’s how the parts look after I hot glued the color-labeled edges of wires via the small holes on ping pong balls. The sewing to tightly wrap the ping pong balls inside the mesh layer seems pretty random (though did the job) and the shapes become very unpredictable.
Material list – Linen fabric(2 colors) – Led lights(4) – Batteries(3) – Battery case – Wire + resistance – Ping Pong balls(4) – Stuffing – Needle + thread
Working process – Testing fabric: how the lights coming out from linen
– Testing soldering: in order to solder 4 Led lights together with the battery case, I was trying soldering different kind of wires to the battery and turned out that the one we used for Arduino’s exercise were the best(and working!)because it has the one piece ends so makes the solder cleaner and easier.
3. Outcome
– So I got this ball shape, organic textured, casual and comfy plush night light⬇️
The Puss Puss night light is made to encourage sex positivity for young female adults and let them be more confident and embrace their body. People often don’t view human genitals the same way like other body parts. But artists have been exploring the visual relationship between female genital and natural elements, such as flowers with pebbles, the cut of a strawberry and many other fruits. The layered structures of these beautiful natural elements could help it become easier to view our own body parts.
The Puss Puss light is designed to be put by your bed or pillow. It looks like a vagina from the front view, but is in the shape of a flower when looked from an angle. The surprise outcome is that it also looks like an octopus from the side! The toy lights up with yellow lights and gives a warm feel to the room at night.
The Process
I bought my fabric from New York Fabrics in Bushwick. A really nice lady helped me explore different material and colors.
The end product used 8 yellow LED lights, 1 battery pack, and 4 different fabrics. The darkest color (dark purple) is very soft and stretchy, the second darkest color, the maroon fabric, is thicker and more durable, the burnt orange fabric is silky, and the lightest pick fabric is soft and fluffy.
I started the project with soldering the lights to make sure my circuit works well. Having 8 lights is tough! The hardest part with the light is to connect the 8 light with the really thin battery pack wire – it broke once in the middle of my sewing later, and my solder is so fat that the heat-shrink tube could barely fit… I connected all the positives of the lights with the resistor so it’s easy to recognize them even after the tube shrink after heating. And luckily – the light worked!
I sewed the light from the inner layer to the outer layer. Except from the middle layer, every other layer comes together with two pieces rounding the inner layer like two piece of lips. Something new I tried was to explore how light comes thought different materials – and with the darker and thicker material, it barely comes through. So I had to change my plan of using an acrylic board to defuse the light. Instead, I put one light on the tip of the middle layer (and yes, that’s the clit), and two lights in each of the two outer layers. The thick cotton defuses the light pretty well in my case.
Something challenging was that I couldn’t plan for the side of each layer upfront. For each of the layer I cut, I had to refer to its inner layer in size so the outer layer can wrap around the inner layer well.
The other challenging part was sewing around the soldered wires at the bottom of the lamp. To stick the light inside the sewed pieces, I had to leave a small opening for each piece, and sewing it close around the wire wasn’t the easiest. But because this part doesn’t show on the outside of the lamp, I didn’t need to do a super clean job – it just had to close and stay stable.
To have the light be able to stand on a table, I created a back bubble when I’m cutting the most outer layer, this is where the other 3 lights stays and where the battery pack is.
After sewing the back close, voila! The Puss Puss Light is finished!
Currently this light sits by my pillows along with my other toys.
My cat Haydn likes it 🙂
If I had more time, I think I would solder the wire better at where it connects to the battery pack. I would also add two more LEDs to the back of the light so that the top part of the back can lights up. But I love how it is now!
Kuchi Kopi is a fictional child’s toy from the TV Show, Bob’s Burgers. I wanted to take it a step further by making it a Matryoshka doll and by decorating each level as a different Bob’s Burgers character: Bob, Linda, Tina, Gene, and Louise.
This toy could be ideal for anyone who is a Bob’s Burgers fan and wants an attractive light display to celebrate a show they love. I personally am a huge Bob’s Burgers fan (hence, why I’m even doing this) and I am actually excited to have this out on display. I’m also genuinely proud I was able to make this work, even if it’s not perfect. It’s something I can really envision brightening someone’s day as they pass it because not only can you have a nice green glow display, but you can really interact with the toy and pull out each character.
I used a polyester brat green material for the cover and I used a thicker polyester cream material for the inside to help create a buffer layer as well as the inner pocket.
I was going to use a sewing machine but I ended up just hand stitching the whole thing. I started by measuring out the patterns in Illustrator to make sure they all fit within one another and without going too big for the outer doll. Then I cut out two pieces of the pattern per material (2 green pieces and 2 cream pieces per doll size). I then sewed a green piece to a cream piece and then sewed the two connected pieces to each other. I finished each layer off by stuffing it and closing out the outer openings while keeping the pocket open.
I decided to go with 3 lights and my circuit diagram is below. This whole project was a huge challenge, and unfortunately, my vision wasn’t completely measured correctly, so I wasn’t able to fit the lights within the plushie as I originally intended. So, the display stand is a last-minute addition. If I had more time or faster skills, I would’ve started over, but unfortunately, this time, I wasn’t able to deliver the final product I originally envisioned.
Overall, this project was such a challenge but I’m really proud of what I was able to accomplish. I guess I challenged myself a little too much because I wasn’t able to execute my proper vision but I am going to cherish this lil guy for a long time.
UPDATE:
I have come back to this project to experiment with adding the light within a plushie, and Linda was looking to get a makeover! Her cute green blush would light up any room 🙂
My night light is designed in the shape of a cat paw, with a black base and soft pink cat fingers. I created it for my own kitten, but I hope everyone who loves cats will enjoy it too. When it lights up, it’s as if the little paw is waving and greeting you, bringing a playful and comforting feeling. The light is meant to make the user feel connected to their love for cats, adding a fun and warm touch to any room.
Description of materials and parts used
I used black fabric for the main part of the cat paw so that light wouldn’t pass through. For the fingers, I used pink felt and sewed a small red LED light behind each finger, so the light only shines through the paw’s fingers.
My journey through this project
The most challenging part of this project was securing the LED lights in the cat fingers. First, I created a circuit with five LED lights. After sewing the pink fabric for the fingers, I attached it to the black base. I then cut small openings behind each pink pad to insert the LED light, ensuring it was centered in the pink part.
If I had more time, I would improve the attachment method of the LED lights for better durability and consider using a rechargeable battery to enhance convenience. Additionally, I would test different light intensities for better visual effects.
The most surprising challenge was managing the fabric’s texture to make sure the light diffused in just the right way. If I had more time, I would focus on refining the materials, experimenting with different shades of pink, and improving the circuitry to make the lighting more even.
Yolk is a plush night light in the shape of an fried egg that I made for this project. It is designed for children aged 6-12. For children, fried eggs often appear in pans or on the dining table. They‘ll unfamiliar with fried eggs appearing on the bed. This is my purpose. I hope this toy can inspire children’s creativity and imagination. At the same time, this brave fried egg will protect children in the dark so that they will no longer fear the dark. This egg night light plush toy combines comfort, functionality and creativity, and is a good companion for children.
Materials：
I used white fabric as the egg white and yellow fabric as the yolk. I also used pink and red felt fabric as the tie bow of the fried eggs to make it look more lovely.
Circuits：
Two yellow light bulbs were placed in my circuit. I thought yellow could better represent the color of the yolk than the white light bulb. I placed one light bulb in the tie bow, another light bulb in the ping-pong ball in the yolk to make the light of the yolk look softer, and placed the switch in the egg white.
Process：
The fried egg is made up of two pieces of fabric, front and back. I cut a hole in the front piece of fabric to sew the yolk and egg white together. This way there is a clear line between the yolk and egg white, which looks more realistic.
Here is what my pulsh night light looks like:
Challenges and Improvements:
-When I put the cotton into the fried egg, I couldn’t control the shape of the cotton, which made the fried eggs look not round. I used a small ruler to adjust the position of the cotton so that the cotton was as evenly distributed as possible in the fried egg. -When placing the light bulb, I initially placed too much cotton above the light bulb, which make light can’t passing through the cotton. Later, I move the cotton that I use, so the light could pass through the cotton and fabric.
If I have time and I am more familiar with sewing and making circuits, I would like to:
-Installing a speaker to play some lullabies or white noise can further enhance the bedtime experience. These gentle melodies can help lull children to sleep and create a peaceful environment. -Add a timer function to automatically turn off lights and sounds after a set period of time. This ensures that toys are not left on all night, thereby improving energy efficiency.
He’s a creative little monster who never has insomnia, and every time he has a new idea, the little hat on his head lights up! I’m making this pillow for myself, hoping that it will both guard my sleep and ensure my inspiration never runs dry .
ZZ’s body
There have been some changes. Initially, there were only two LED lights on ZZ’s head. However, when I put the lights inside the doll’s body, I tried one in the heart 🫀 area. I really liked this feeling, as if it had truly come to life. So, I decided to add another glowing part, and that’s how the circuit ended up looking like in the later version.
The creation process was very immersive. I set up a camera to record the entire process, but unfortunately it went out of focus, so I only have a few screenshots. The middle images can be used.
