Maya
15 Years Experience
Kansas City, MO
Female, 27
I make dolls and stuffed animals by hand, and I'm learning to do wooden toys also. Sometimes I design my own toys! I've been making them since I was 12 years old. (And this Q&A has been running for 10.) I sell them at craft fairs, farmers markets, through word of mouth, and also (soon) online. Ask me anything! :)
All of them! Well, I should amend that to exclude the ones with lead based paint, and excessive plastic. I suppose some plastic toys are now also becoming old school.
Really though, I get nostalgic about toys that are far too outdated for me to ever remember from their glory days. Hoop and stick sets; whammy diddles; wooden frog noisemaker toys; wooden jigsaw puzzles that were actually cut with a jigsaw at home; dollhouses with real wooden furniture ... It's just all so lovely. I like toys that make you feel like you're in another world, both time-wise and imagination-wise. Modern toys leave less to the imagination. I can't pick just one old school toy. :)
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Haha, pretty much! My mum always wants socks - and I do make her some nice lace ones. By this point, knitting is a skill in my toymaking repertoire, more than the other way round. But I do some other knitting stuff sometimes. But yeah, any kids or kids-at-heart definitely get toys. And if I forget a birthday till the last minute (guilty!!) then it's just so easy to pull an overnighter and make a small toy, and they always love it! :)
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Yes and yes! I am going for my Bachelors in Holistic Health Sciences, and I make toys on and off as a side business or just for fun sometimes. It isn't very lucrative unless I take them to craft fairs, and I've just moved across the country so it'll take me time to find craft fairs worth vending in. So I'm in a bit of a lull right now.
I may also take a bit of a break from selling in the future, since my partner and I plan on starting a family in a few years - what little time I'll have for toy making will definitely be devoted to my own kids for awhile!
But ultimately, toy making will always be something I'm doing in my spare time, no matter who it's for or whether I make any money off of it :)
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Not usually, but once in awhile, and that's a large part of why I make them in the first place. I love to have confirmation of the little fantasies that I see while I make my toys, of them getting loved and hugged and ultimately dragged through the mud, getting time-worn in a way that can only happen when a child really loves a toy.
I remember there was one lady in particular, a rather new grandmother, who became my biggest fan in my early to mid teens and always loved to buy my toys for her little granddaughter. She loved them so much she gave me her business card and wanted me to let her know whenever I did a craft fair in the area so she could come see me and my toys. I loved hearing how her granddaughter loved my toys!
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Oh, a very good question! Over the past couple of years I’ve been busy designing my own line of knit toys - they can all be made in many sizes and they’re all made in one piece, so you only have to close up the stuffing openings, but there’s no parts to sew on and guess placement etc. So I’m very proud of the hard work it took to design those. I just finished the doll for that collection so I’m excited about that at the moment!
On the whole, more than individual projects I get excited about figuring out a new technique or design!
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No, I never got into Minecraft. But in 2016 (the year of Pokémon Go) I did make a multitude of Pokémon and poke balls. They were sold in a local retro video game shop.
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My biggest fail would definitely be a custom order for three snails that were supposed to look just like a character in a storybook. I took the commission after co-selecting a snail pattern I had not used before (will never make that mistake again) and the pattern turned out to be a confusing nightmare, as did the effort to incorporate the color changes required for the book character. It took ages longer than I had estimated, leaving me - and worse, my customer - harried and frustrated.
My biggest success has absolutely been the line of animals I’ve designed myself. I started knitting those and writing the patterns in 2017 and never looked back. They are my pride and joy!
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