The Making Process

I decided to paint the body yellow as the form is quite large and heavy and the brighter yellow made it look lighter. Building from this, as I wanted the feet to hang below, I painted them a dark blue, making them stand out against the body and look heavier which aligns with their purpose within the toy. As shown in a later photo, I chose to add red as the nose and handle details because if I had chosen blue again, I think the toy would have looked a bit monotonous.

As I had to drill holes into my piece to add the magnets and the string, there were a few splits in the wood. This was because I was drilling directly into the edge grain of my wood piece which is a bit like trying to drill into the side of a pink wafer biscuit. To fix this, I mixed up a two-part resin glue and then added sawdust to create a paste and used this to fill any splits in the wood that I had caused. I then sanded it down again, painted it using the house paint and used linseed oil to finish it as on my tests, the linseed oil was the finish I liked the best.