For immediate
release
6 June. 2005
For More Information Contact:
Marilyn Scott-Waters (714) 604-9497
Whimsical artist takes on new title: The Toymaker
New book of paper toys now available
COSTA MESA -- Toymaker Marilyn Scott-Waters' new book of whimsical paper toys
for children is capitalizing on the success of her web site which has touched
a nerve with people who are looking for something different than the latest
video game or this year's giant robot, and has sparked a unique and creative
home-based business.
When Scott-Waters, a Costa Mesa native and artist, was laid off after a merger
from her clothing design job six years ago -- an inspiration-crushing existence
churning out high performance motorcycle apparel -- she decided to look at
her situation as an opportunity to do something different.
By all appearances, Scott-Waters was a successful businesswoman and artist,
and could have been back at work just about anywhere she wanted. But the desire
to spend more time with her family and do the art and design she wanted to
do lead her in the direction of entrepreneurship.
While spending the last several years doing freelance product design, she
has also created the world of "The Toymaker" from her Baker Street
home studio. This lead to www.thetoymaker.com. Then with the success of the
web-site, (over 250,000 hits in one year!) and at the request of many of the
site's visitors, Scott-Waters decided to publish her own book of designs,
called: "The Toymaker: Folded Paper Toys You Can Make Yourself,"
which came out in July, 2004.
The book is now available through thetoymaker.com website, Amazon.com, Barnes
and Noble and Borders.
Homebased businesses are becoming more popular, with nearly 17 million nationwide
accounting for 70 percent of American businesses. Scott-Waters said she is
happy to have a business who's main purpose is to bring a little innocent
joy into the life of children without any ulterior agenda, and to make a living
by getting parents and kids to slow down and take some time to be together,
while spending more time at home with her own family.
For more information, or to interview Marilyn Scott-Waters, call (714) 604-9497#
Dr.
Tom Garrison
Orange Coast College / University of Southern California
Thomson/Brooks-Cole Publishing Company
"Research has shown that consistent and positive parent-child
interaction leads to growth in intelligence and focus in children. Every
parent intuitively knows that, but parents are sometimes at a loss for ways to
proceed. Marilyn Scott-Waters thoughtful and beautiful book provides a
welcome set of cut-and-paste constructions that will bring adults and kids
together in enjoyable and creative ways. Our grandkids love them!"
--
Lois Robbert
Instructor UCLA Extension,
Author of: "Teachers and Parents Working Together for Children's School
Success"
The most valuable gift any parent can give a child is one-on-one attention. It
builds self-esteem and gives the child a feeling that they are truly loved.
Creating an art project with a parent is a rewarding experience for a child.
When parents give up their time to spend one-on-one with them, the child gains
in self-esteem and the feeling I am loved, I am cherished.
We often wonder how to motivate children. It comes from the feeling that my
parents care about me, I am important in their lives. One-on-one attention and
time spent with a child is the best way to get across the message, I care about
you, I love you.
The Toymaker:
At the Intersection of Family, Art and Business
When Costa Mesa native and artist Marilyn Scott-Waters was laid off after a
merger from her graphic designer's job six years ago -- an inspiration-crushing
existence churning out high performance motorcycle apparel -- she decided to look
at her situation as an opportunity to do something different.
Instead of just trying to jump right back into the job pool, Scott-Waters
decided she would do freelancing from home. This accomplished two things: 1.
The ability to have more creative and business control over her art, and 2. a
chance to spend more time with her son Joel, who was just a toddler at that
time.
Although not as lucrative as an Art Director running the design departments for
multi-million dollar companies, at least Scott-Waters was happy. She said it
was a very therapeutic time for her, decompressing from what was often a very
harsh world of professional graphic design.
Part of that catharsis was writing stories about "The Toymaker."
"I invented this universe where toys were important, toymakers were
important; where it was important to play," she said. She also found
herself, in her spare time from contract art jobs designing ball cap and
t-shirt logos, creating cut and fold paper toys, as way to of cutting loose and
a chance to just indulge her creativity for its own sake.
"I thought of them as 'silly, fluffy things.' Then I would literally stuff
them in a bag in the closet where they weren't doing anyone any good," she
said. "I started to think, 'well, I could give them away.' Great thing
about the Internet; you can share stuff with the whole world."
Touching a Nerve
Last year for her anniversary, she asked her husband, Ronn, for web hosting for
a proposed Internet site -- www.thetoymaker.com -- shortly after which, the site
went live allowing people to download her paper toy designs for free.
She was unprepared for the response.
"It has just been tremendous," she said. "The hit counter just
started ticking over. I was getting 100, 200, 500, 700 hits a day, even up
in the 7,000s at one point."
In just over a year, thetoymaker.com has received over 200,000 visitors, with
responses pouring in from teachers, parents, old, young from all over the
globe.
"I started an email list, and I was getting responses from people in Africa,
Russia, China, Israel, Iraq, Canada, Brazil, Japan, New Zealand, Australia,
along with the United States."
Closer to home, she has found no shortage of supporters and fans of her work,
such as Dr. Tom Garrison from Orange Coast College:
"Research has shown that consistent and positive parent-child
interaction leads to growth in intelligence and focus in children. Every
parent intuitively knows that, but parents are sometimes at a loss for ways to
proceed. Marilyn Scott-Waters thoughtful and beautiful book provides a
welcome set of cut-and-paste constructions that will bring adults and kids
together in enjoyable and creative ways. Our grandkids love them!"
Art, Family and Business
Then with the success of the website, and at the request of many of the site's
visitors, Scott-Waters decided to publish her own book of designs, called:
"The Toymaker: Folding Paper Toys You Can Make Yourself,"
which came out in July, 2004.
The book is available through thetoymaker.com website, Amazon.com and at specialty
bookstores in Costa Mesa and Long Beach.
While the challenges of getting a book published are daunting, Scott-Waters
is no stranger to the business of the visual arts. Before starting Scott-Waters
Design, she was designing full product lines for Honda, Yamaha, and Polaris.
Before that, working for a subsidiary of Nike, she was the art director for
the world's largest baseball cap manufacturer.
By all appearances, Scott-Waters was a successful businesswoman and artist, and
could have been back at work just about anywhere she wanted. But the desire to
spend more time with her family and do the art and design she wanted to do lead
her in the direction of entrepreneurship.
This is an increasingly popular direction in America, where the Small Business
Administration estimated in 2001 that there were nearly 17 million home-based
businesses, and that these going concerns represent around 70 percent of the
business activity in the United States.
As a seasoned veteran of the art and graphics business, she said she knows that
the road to getting a book widely published and line of graphics in the market
is tough. But her experience, both in the industry, as well as her burgeoning
experience with people who visit The Toymaker, have lead her to believe there
is a wide market for her toy designs.
She is hoping to expand beyond the first book to create a line of Toymaker
books, as well as expand the website.
Meeting Needs
Best of all, though, the ability to have a business who's main purpose is to
bring a little innocent joy into the life of children without any ulterior
agenda, and to make a living by getting parents and kids to slow down and take
some time to be together, while living a settled life at home with her own
family, is like a dream coming true.
This concept is embodied in the simple Latin motto for her business: "Abrideri
et Oblectare" -- or more
simply, "To Amuse and Delight."
The book contains 15 of Scott-Waters favorite designs in full glossy color,
with easy-to-follow instructions: a Sun Box, Spinners, Marble Mice, Tooth Fairy
Gazebo, The Happy Bus, A Bug Box, A Bear Wagon, Florimel the Magnificent, A
Butterfly Basket, A Window to Fairyland, A Penny Aeroplane, The Toy Shop, A
Dream Theater, two Penny Butterflies and a cootie catcher.
"Although the toys both in the book and on the website reach out to many
diverse cultures and draw inspiration from many genres, there is an innocence
and whimsy in the toys that seems to cross cultures and touch something in just
about everyone who visits The Toymaker site.
"Sometimes I'll just doodle a picture and then think of how to use it
later," she said. "Everything I do is pretty fanciful, so it's not
like the designs need to be historically accurate."
She said her one guideline that is set in stone is "not a paper clock ...
I work very hard at making the models easy enough for kids to figure out with a
little adult supervision, or simple enough for an adult to put together with a
little kid supervision."
And at the end of the day, that is really the context for the Toymaker --
getting parents and kids together for a little "us" time.
"My goal is to help grown-ups and kids spend time together making
things," she said. "You know, kids spell love T-I-M-E."
It may seem counterintuitive in an age where a current television commercial
touts "educational" software by saying "no dessert for you
unless you play your video games," that Scott-Waters is trying to reach
a mass audience with something positively old-fashioned.
But researchers and child psychologists and psychiatrists in the past 10 years
have been questioning the wisdom of exposing young children to the wonders of
the information age in an era of hyper-achievement and inflated expectations.
There are those who believe that our current parenting models of exposing
children to computers at an early age, while sending them to every conceivable
kind of class or program or club in order to "get an edge," might
have some value, but might also have steep price for kids.
Tendencies towards aggression, isolation, low frustration-tolerance, are just a
few traits being noticed by child care professionals.
In her essay, The Dot.Com Kids and the Demise of Frustration Tolerance,
Dr. Marilyn B. Benoit, President of the American Academy of Child and
Adolescent Psychiatry Washington, D.C., wrote:
"Children now live in an ecology of technology. The gradual transition
described by Erickson [Childhood
and Society, Erik Erikson, Norton, 1950] from the child's autosphere to
the social macrosphere no longer exists. The brain of the young child is
overstimulated by the new multimedia environment with its sound effects, and
rapidly changing, attention grabbing images... Is it possible that, (given our
new insights into brain development and brain and behavior), that different neural
pathways and changing neurotransmitter levels and combinations are
developing?"
As Scott-Waters said: "Kids have too many activities, but not enough
inter-activities." It is with no little irony then that Scott-Waters is
using state of the art modern imaging technology to create one of the world's
oldest forms of toys.
In a day and age where innocence is often confused with gullibility and
"child-like" with "childish" and cynicism and skepticism
seek to crush enjoyment in the fanciful, there is an importance and earnestness
in something as simple as making paper toys.
"We live in a world that is not kind to amateurs; artists who do something
just for the love of it. It's an act of bravery just putting pencil on
paper."
As whimsical as they are, it is not a rejection of the technology age, but an
attempt to slow down and hold on to a little humanity in an increasingly fast
and complex world that doesn't seem to have a lot of room or time for things
like a "Tooth Fairy Gazebo," "Penny Aeroplane" or "The
Adventures of Florimel the Magnificent."
Scott-Waters said her own personal observations have lead her to believe that
not just kids, but people in general are hungry for ways to be more engaged,
not just as consumers but as creators.
"When you take the time to read to a child or to 'cut and paste' or to
write a story, there is something very wonderful that happens. You're not
just passive, you are active," she said. "My goal is just to help
people and kids spend some time together making things. Make toys! Play more!
Make a little something and give it to another human being."
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