Tag: plush night light

Are you a young adult?

Have you found yourself feeling lonely?

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:

1. Embroider Eyes and Mouth Details
2. Make more accessories
3. Make 5 Dogs

Thank you so much for reading my blog post!

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

1. Something New: I learned to connect multiple colored LEDs to the same power source, choosing varying resistors per color and
2. 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.
3. 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.