Cute present

It was recently our son's fourth birthday.
He received this super cute present from his cousin - who is a bit older than him and has a very clever mum who sewed the bunny. But the house was all decorated by my nephew! I was very impressed!! I love all the little details!

Tutorial: Adding crinkly to your projects

Today I'd like to show you how you can incorporate the crinkly material (available from our shop at www.tomnidesign.com.au) into your projects..

I've been making some elephant softie squeaker toys lately and thought that the crinkly would make a nice addition..

Adding the crinkly is really simple and I'm going to show you how I sewed it inside the elephant ears, but the same technique could be used with other toy parts that are made from two pieces of fabric, such as blankies, taggies, wings, fins, etc.. You can also use the same technique to sewing the crinkly to toy segments e.g. parts of a soft ball, so that it will crinkle when you hold that area of the toy...

1. Sew your two pieces together as per usual. Here I am sewing the front and back of the elephant ears together.

2. Once the pieces are sewn together cut a piece of the crinkle material - I like to cut it a little bigger than the fabric.

3. I like to double stitch my seams when I made baby toys, hence the two lines of stitching in the above pic.

Now to sew the crinkly - Place the crinkle material on top of the fabric and sew through all three layers just outside the original stitching line. This way when the kids pull on the ears when they play with the finished toy, they won't be pulling on the stitching that attaches the crinkly.

4. I like to scrunch up the crinkly a bit when I sew it in, to give it a little more 'slack'.

5. Once you've sewn the crinkly in place, cut off the excess. It's as easy as that!

Here are my pieces ready to be sewn into another elephant.. :)

NEW ONLINE STORE - TOMNI design

It has been a long time coming, but we have FINALLY given our toy making supplies store a facelift!

The landing page now looks something like this:

To celebrate the launch of our new store, we are having a 10% sale across all of our stock - including a range of BRAND NEW products that have not been available for sale previously!

Here's a preview:

We have also changed some categories and added new ones, so take some time out to browse through our new store! Here's the address: www.tomnidesign.com.au

We'd love to hear any comments and feedback so feel free to comment here, or on our facebook page: www.facebook.com/tomnidesign

Sensory Blankie Tutorial - mirror, crinkly and more!

Here is a tutorial for how to make a sensory blanket using a number of products from our online store.. For anyone new to our shop and blog, you can purchase the featured items from our toy supplies store at www.tomnidesign.com.au

Today I'll write what I did to make this blankie, but it could be made with a range of items (like teether rings or flowers, and in different sizes..

** I added some Amendment comments to this tutorial in October... **

I forgot to take a 'here is what you'll need' pic, but here is the list of the items I used:
- crinkle material
- mirror material
- green teether ear
- bias binding (I used white one, that was 0.5cm wide when folded)
- grosgrain ribbon strips (approx 7cm long x 5 colours, from own stash)
- coloured fabric (from own stash)
- yellow minky (from own stash)
- sewing machine, thread, needle

Cut your two fabric pieces and crinkly material to size. Mine was a square measuring about 27x27cm. Sew the crinkly to the left side of the fabric, about 0.5cm from the edge. The crinkly can be a little slippery, so I found it easier to sew the pieces together with the crinkly placed on top of the fabric. I also used a double layer of crinkly, so I ended up with an extra loud blankie.

** October Amendment: I found it can be easier to manage the pieces when you sew in the Crinkly once your project pieces are sewn together - see for the next comment down a few steps **

Here's what the fabric with crinkly sewn all around it looked like.

Now to make your mirror - Trace a circle on the mirror material with a permanent marker. Cut it out.

Peel off the adhesive backing and adhere the mirror to fabric (we adhered it to the minky). Cut off the excess fabric.

Sew the bias binding all around the mirror, removing the edge of the protective film as you go along. I recommend leaving most of the protective film on the mirror while you're doing the sewing. Keep going with the bias binding until it covers about 1cm of the binding you sewed on first.

Gently pull the bias to the side and keep sewing the two bias sides to create a cord about 7cm long.

Your finished mirror should look something like this. I also made another bias cord by sewing the bias pieces together which I used to attach the rattle ring to the blankie.

Arrange your ribbons, ring, teether ear, mirror and any other parts on the right side of the fabric.

Sew the pieces to the top of the fabric, about 5mm from the edge. This will make sure that the pieces don't move around when you sew on the other fabric (in my case the minky). I sewed the green teether ear on the corner of the blankie. I placed it about 7mm from the edges. I sewed across the wider part, a few stitches across the thin part in the middle of the ear. You can see I also did a zig zag stitch across the thin part just to make sure it was sewn in well.

Place the fabric pieces (right sides towards each other) and sew them together about 7mm from the edge. Make sure you leave a big enough gap along one edge to be able to turn the blankie inside out.

** October Amendment: You can sew the Crinkly on top of the fabric at this step... Just make sure you don't sew over the gap you left for turning the blankie inside out **

Turn your blankie inside out.

Sew the gap by hand. I then sewed across the edge of the right side of the blankie for extra durability.

And here's the finished product! :)

Let us know what you think - we'd also love to see your versions of this blankie..

Mirror Stickers Project

The new flexible mirror material is a very versatile product and the other day together with my son we decided to make some mirror wall stickers.. This is a super easy project and here are the steps:

Draw your design on the back of the flexible mirror material using a permanent marker.

Cut our your design.

Peel off the backing and adhere your shape to a flat surface e.g. wall.

Peel off the protective green film.

All done!

You can purchase the flexible mirror material from our online store: www.tomnidesign.com.au

Flexible mirror material and Crinkle material

We now stock two new EXCITING products!

We now stock the long awaited CRINKLE MATERIAL and MIRROR FABRIC!

The crinkle material makes a lovely, crispy, loud sound when scrunched and is great for using in sensory blankets, or as a stuffing for toys.. A great idea is to stuff a part of a toy e.g. a leg, with the crinkly material, so that the child can discover the hidden sound...

The mirror material is 0.25mm thick. It has an adhesive back and a protective green layer on top to protect the surface while you work with it.

This flexible mirror has so much potential! It is easily cut with scissors and sewn through with a sewing machine.

It is made from a PETG material, which is commonly used in commercially made and sold mirror toys for children. Once again, we have sourced this material from a manufacturer who sells this product to well known toy manufacturing companies..

You can purchase it from www.tomnidesign.com.au

Pull string music boxes

We have received a shipment of pull string music boxes, which are currently being added to our online store..

We have these available in two tunes: 'A dream is a wish your heart makes' and 'Brahm's lullaby'.


Here's a recording of what the pull string music boxes sound like. This is the "A dream is a wish your heart makes" tune..

 listen to the tune on our youtube channel here..

These pull string music inserts play a tune which goes for about 1.5 minutes and is activated when the cord is pulled. As music plays, cord is slowly drawn back into unit. This inserts are ideal for placing inside softies, bears, dolls and all sort of toys, as well as for creating wall and door decorations.

When you put these inside a softie, the toy filling mellows out some of the 'sharper sounding' tones...

For further information, check out the items in our online store - www.tomnidesign.com.au/store, under the 'music boxes' category..

Or to see how these can be used in a softie, check out our previous post here

How to insert a Music Pull String Box into a Toy

Here are a few pictures from the project I worked on - inserting a musical pull string box into a soft toy.

Inserting the box sounded much more difficult in theory than it ended up being in practise, but I did have to do some 'unpicking' and 'resewing' as my initial thoughts of the involved steps had to be reviewed.... :)

If I get a chance I'll put up more pictures and a more thorough description.. In the meantime if you need help putting one of these boxes into your softie project, please feel free to contact me through the 'contact us' link in our online store (www.tomnidesign.com.au)..

These are the supplies I started off with: front and back pieces of my owl (plus the wings), musical pull string box (available from our online store), yellow teether flower for the handle (from our online store), brown fabric (for the cord) and grosgrain ribbon (for the tie)..

You could apply the same technique to any other softie toy, as long as there's enough room inside it to accommodate for the music box.

After sewing the cord and turning it inside out I sewed it between the front and back pieces, into the bottom edge of the toy, leaving a tiny gap in the middle of the cord for threading the pull string. I also sewed in the tie on top while sewing the toy front and back pieces together.

And here is the end result! A softie owl with a tie on top and a music box inside. The music box is activated when the yellow flower handle is pulled. My son totally loved the owl and so we kept on hearing Brahm's lullaby over and over and over.. and over again!

Help us choose new products..

We are looking at extending our product range - but would like some feedback as to which products you think we should bring in...

Here's the suggestions:

 

Let us know which products you would like to see in our shop.. :)

Teether Corner Pieces - how to tutorial..

The corner pieces have finally arrived and have been added to the online store here

Here's an example of how they can be used - as a corner on a blanket...

Here's a short tutorial on how to add these to your blanket...

1. Make your blanket - cut out two squares / rectangles and placing the right sides together, sew around it, leaving a small gap (approx 10cm) so you can turn it out.

2. Turn your blanket right sides out. Decide which corner you will be attaching the corner piece to. Turn this corner inside the blanket - make sure your edge that you turn in is the same length as the inside of the plastic corner. If using a corner without a hole, you do not need to do this step, as the corner will go over the fabric corner.

3. Sew across the corner. Sew around the rest of the blanket (if you would like to have extra stitching along the edge of the blanket).

4. Line up the plastic corner on top of the blanket corner.

 5. Pre-stitch the holes in the plastic corner. You can do this using your sewing machine (by turning the wheel manually, as otherwise you may break the needle), or you can make the holes using a strong, sharp needle. You may find it useful to use a zipper foot on your machine so you can punch the holes further away from the corner edge.

 6. Sew on the corner using a sharp, strong needle using thicker cotton. It can be a bit tricky sewing through all the layers at once, so try breaking it up. To start, make a knot and sew it to the fabric. Push needle through the first hole in the corner piece, back down through the next hole and through the fabric, and push the needle out the side of the plastic corner piece (picture shows the needle going from bottom up)...

 then keep pushing the needle up through the second plastic lip. Continue until you have stitched all along the corner piece. Finish off by sewing the thread end under the plastic corner lip..

Please be careful when sewing these corners in by hand as sewing though the layers can require some extra force at times..

Feel free to send in your pictures of how you've used these corners in your projects so we can share them with other crafters :)

Freebies

The weather here in Melbourne has been a bit miserable lately, so we have decided it's time to  cheer  things up with some freebies and special deals!

For the next little while we will be giving away some toy making supply freebies (rattle inserts, squeakers, rings etc) and will have some special offer deals as well!..

These offers will be advertised via our tomnidesign facebook page so make sure you are our follower!

First freebie is already up - but the offer expires on the 27th of June 2012!

New Rattle Ball Inserts

We have added two more products to our toy making supplies range..

Clear rattle balls  

 

and bigger white rattle balls.. 

To find our more or to purchase them via our online store (www.tomnidesign.com.au/store) please click on the above links...

Here's also a video showing the sound that these 35mm toy rattle inserts make..