Bright and Beautiful – making wooden toys for children. Children love bright colours. Children love toys.
Bright chunky colourful wooden toys are made to be a child’s best ever most favourite toy.
The trick is to make wooden toys that are quick and easy to sell at your wooden toy craft market stall. Elaborate and time consuming toy designs are costly.
When designing your range of wooden toys, simplify the design, and amplify certain features that will identify it. A car, for instance will have 4 wheels, a boat will be sharp at one end and blunt at the other. An aeroplane will have wings. Trains will have small and large wheels, with a funnel.
Typically, the body of the wooden toy should be able to be cut from a single piece of wood, using not more than 2 cuts. Templates can be cut from masonite, and traced off onto the lumber being used.
Plan the construction process of the wooden toys, from timber selection, through marking out, cutting, sanding, drilling, and painting. Some items will need to have other bits added, such as wheels or funnels. The individual items need to be painted before joining them. Try to avoid nailing and screwing, as wood glue on its own will provide a sufficiently strong joint for most applications. If in doubt about this, use a glued dowel to join parts.
Wooden toys for children need to be very well sanded, to avoid splintering. Don’t be too worried about crisp edges, children aren’t. A good paint layer will help seal the wood and provide an attractive colourful finish.
Suitable wooden toys to sell at a craft market are cars, boats, trains, planes, and the evergreen building blocks.
Display your toys all jumbled up on a carpet in front of a toy chest, toward the front of your craft market stall, to attract the attention of children.
© Copyright Tony Flanigan 2014
