Pull Toy

I am wanting to fill the nursery with cute baby toys, so I have been scouring Etsy for cute stuff, which I find, but many beautiful items exquisitely made are equally priced. There are some things that I am willing to pay for, such as this adorable felted Peter Rabbit that came to all the way from England. I do feel that as long as I try to make items for the dollhouse that I can splurge once in awhile on special items. So while this little Peter Rabbit wasn't really that expensive, overseas shipping doubled his cost. 

I did find some wooden pull toy kits on Etsy and I was tempted, until I found the same kits at the miniature show a few weeks ago. The pieces were so tiny and required painting; I decided that I didn't want to go there.

I wanted to make a sheep pull toy. While wondering the aisles of Michale's (I was actually out of town at a week end scrap booking crop, making an emergency run to the local Michale's for more card stock), I found this package of mini animals. 

I couldn't wait to get home to make my pull toy. Eagerly, I began digging through my stash looking for parts. These wooden rounds of various sizes come in handy for a multitude of projects. I found them at Hobby Lobby. The wheels were my biggest challenge. As I looked at pull toys on the web, I found that most of the wheels were spoked wheels. I thought about using buttons, but settled on these little wooden disks.

I wish I could give you size detentions of each piece, but when you go to the stash, you look for what might work and hope to get lucky. 

I used my circle gauge to try to get the center of each disk marked.

Then used my hand drill to make the hole as centered as possible.

The wood is soft, so the nails take some force to slide them. Look closely at the next photo and you will see that one wheel broke.

Next, I drilled holes in the side of the little cart bed.

Once again I was able to push the nails into the holes. I pre-drilled a hole for the eyelet, but since it was threaded I made only a starter hole.

How about a pig pull toy?

A cow, maybe?

Chickens are cute, too.

But I like sheep best.

I used craft paint to finish it up. I first used dark brown brown then added a thinned coat of red and wiped it off with a rag. Later I roughed up the surface just a bit with an emory board to give it a warn look and added a length of crochet thread for the pull rope.

And there you have it. Now, you try.

Thanks so much for stopping by. See you soon.