Marilyn Scott-Waters

Marilyn Scott-Waters loves making things out of paper. Her popular website, www.thetoymaker.com, receives 3,000 to 7,000 visitors each day, who have downloaded more than three million of her easy-to-make paper toys. Her goal is to help parents and children spend time together making things, which she herself does with her own child every week. (Monday model night) Marilyn is the author of The Toymaker: Paper Toys That You Can Make Yourself, the best selling paper toy book on Amazon.com.

To see how Marilyn gets from a light sketch to a finished toy car her son can then destroy with a monster truck, visit her blog at http://www.livejournal.com/users/thetoymaker/

Marilyn started her own design firm after supervising a team of seven designers for Nike, designing thousands of baseball caps, and creating full clothing lines for companies like Harley Davidson, Arctic Cat and Yamaha. Over the years her clients have included Mercedes Benz, Porsche, Pacific Sunwear, Jaguar, BMW, Fender Guitars, Cindy Crawford and the Department of the Defense. She cried when she realized running her own business meant she could finally attend her kid's preschool field trips. She keeps busy illustrating children’s books.

Marilyn is a member of Mensa, which she joined to meet guys who read books outside the bathroom. It worked. She is blissfully married to a clever man, and they have a ten-year-old son. Marilyn is also the illustrator of the children's books Bowregarde and Bowregarde's Hospital Handbook, a pile of Toymaker novels and is the creator of the online comic, The Return of Doctor Dragonwagon. She is currently illustrating an intriguing book series for Scholastic, and thinks toys can help make the world a better place.