The · Toymaker

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Every year after Christmas we do a big house purge, get bags of stuff ready for Goodwill, go through drawers and closets and get ready for January. This year as part of the Big Tidy, I put new drawer paper in my dresser. Mint green. Nice.
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My mom bought the dresser for five bucks at a garage sale fifty years ago to use as my changing table. In the last hundred years it's been a variety of colors, white enamel, sixties electric blue, olive green and finally stripped to the original oak.
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Only a third or so of the dresser contains my clothes, the rest is memories. There's the wonderhub's army gear, dog tags, aviation wings, the boy's baby clothes, baby teeth, pictures of grandmothers and great grandmothers. .
I'm not an elegant person, at least not now so much, but when I was younger I was. There are hints of that time here, leather gloves, scarves from Lucern, jewelry from Paris, scarabs from Egypt, an ebony clothes brush I bought at Harrods.
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There're also a few things that belonged to my younger brother who died when he was sixteen. There's a hysterically funny love note to a girl declaring that she was his favorite girlfriend. Tucked between scarves and sweaters there's a wonderful ABC book that he wrote, illustrated and bound with seventies wallpaper.
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Now all these random bits and whatnot are all put away and I'm looking forward to a new year.
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How about you? Do you have a drawer of fond memories?
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Marilyn.
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Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.
~ Charles Dickens

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MERRY CHRISTMAS!
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Wishing you all good things!
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Marilyn.
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The joy of brightening other lives, bearing each others' burdens, easing other's loads and supplanting empty hearts and lives with generous gifts becomes for us the magic of Christmas." 
~ W. C. Jones 

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I just love these picture's Kim drew of the Gibbons and Capulets at the zoo. So lively! She said that when she was an animator for Disney they used to go to the zoo once a week and draw. How awesome is that?
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What's your dream job?
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Marilyn.

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Just a few more sketches from the Santa Ana Zoo sketch day. The monkeys rarely stopped moving, which made them hard to draw. I was in complete envy and awe of my friend Kim's drawings. She worked in animation for years for Disney and really captured the way the Gibbons swung around, back, front and sides.
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You can see some of her lovely work here.
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http://kimdwinell.blogspot.com/
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Well, off to make another pile of Christmas cookies for a cookie exchange this afternoon!
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Stay warm!
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Marilyn.
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My friends are my estate.
-Emily Dickinson

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I had the best of times today drawing animals at the Santa Ana zoo with the OC Illustrators. It's not a big zoo, and it's certainly not overfunded. There are a few monkeys and an elephant.
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What's really interesting to me is how animals limb's work, how they bend and how they sit. I can't wait to go back!
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Is there are zoo by your house?
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Marilyn.
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The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.
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~ Chaucer
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Just got back from taking a pen making class with the family and several of our friends. It was great fun. I've done woodworking before but never used a lathe. We all made our own ballpoint pens.
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A big thanks to pen guru, Greg Minuskin, for taking the pictures. We got to use a band saw, drill, lathe and pen press.
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Don't be afraid to attempt something new.

Remember, it was amateurs who built the ark.

It was professionals who built the Titanic.

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Last night we made a gigantic batch of peanut/coconut/sunflower seed oatmeal cookies for the hub's cookie exchange tomorrow. We made bags out of envelopes and stapled the recipe on with a bit of ribbon. Fifteen bags ready to go! I feel so homemaker-y!
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The frames are filled with cut paper silhouettes. (Aren't you impressed that I can spell "silhouette"? Took me forever to learn how to do it.) I had fun doing them. I'm trying to figure out how I could run black paper through my printer. Maybe an iron-on wold work. Hmmmm......
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How about you? What are you making this Christmas?
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Warm thoughts,
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Marilyn.
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It comes every year and will go on forever. And along with Christmas belong the keepsakes and the customs. Those humble, everyday things a mother clings to, and ponders, like Mary in the secret spaces of her heart." 
~ Marjorie Holmes

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I bought four lovely box frames yesterday at IKEA. Black frames, white mattes... so I've been pondering filling them with some paper cuttings.
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If you can name these two characters you are either grew up watching the BBC or are an anglophile extraordinaire.
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We have two cookie exchanges this year. Any suggestions?
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Marilyn.
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Wake up, be bright, be golden and light...
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It's December First! Print a Toymaker Advent Calendar!
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http://www.thetoymaker.com/Holidays/Christmas/Christmas.html
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Working away on my ten dollar gift challenge. What are you making for Christmas? What is your favorite part of the holidays and what do you not like? What's your fondest memory?
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Warm thoughts,
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Marilyn
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It is the personal thoughtfulness,
the warm human awareness,
the reaching out of the self to one's fellow man
that makes giving worthy of the Christmas spirit.

~ Isabel Currier.

Well, I finally made Death Knight in World of Warcraft. It took forever. The boy even paid for the Wrath of the Lich King upgrade as my Christmas present. I'm completely hopeless as a player, utterly clueless. but I do have fun. We drive the wonderhub nuts as we yell back and forth across the hall,
"More mana, Mom!"
"Help! I'm being pnded!"
"I can't figure out to work the "Eye of Acheran"
"Mom, can I have some gold?"
"Mine your own dang gold."
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Fear me.
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A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men.

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Hey Small Dog! Why are you so sad? What's that ? You have lots of friends that you want to give presents to but you don't have much money? That's not a problem at all! Let's get to work!
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We can make thoughtful presents just using materials that you can buy anywhere.
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Here's ten things that I bought at the dollar store. I bet we can make all kinds of nice things. You cool with that? Sweet!
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The only true gift is a portion of yourself."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson


If you have a suggestion or idea for the Small Dog for a spiffy dollar craft, let me know!
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Sending sunny thoughts your way,
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Marilyn.
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I wish you sunshine on your path and storms to season your journey.
I wish you peace in the world in which you live...
More I cannot wish you except perhaps love to make all the rest worthwhile.
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~ Robert A. Ward
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You know the best thing to do with an old envelope? Make a house out of it! I got a catalog in the mail and used the envelope to make a Pudding Palace for the Small Dog. A squarish envelope works best. No glue required!
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Marilyn.
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The most important work you and I will ever do
will be within the walls of our own homes.
~ Harold B. Lee

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I stayed up way too late last night doodling Naruto characters.
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Okay, name all the characters.

For bonus points what's missing?
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Which two characters have the Sharingan eye?
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Who's nickname is "Bushy brows"?
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Who has a tattoo on his forehead and what does it mean?
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Who got teased as a kid for having a big forehead?
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Have fun!
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Marilyn.

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Writing is easy, rewriting is hard. A lot of my friends are taking part in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)
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http://www.nanowrimo.org/
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The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. One of the blocks to writing is the idea that everything has to be perfect, that each sentence springs perfectly crafted, like Venus rising from the sea, from your fingers on to the page.
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There might be someone somewhere that can write like, that but that person is not me. I suspect that it's not most other folks either.The idea of cranking out a novel in a month forces you to not get muddied down with the details but to get it out there. Get the story out on paper. There is something perfectly lovely about that.
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I've been writing a lot lately. Actually, I take that back, I've been re-writing a lot. The series that I'm working on with my writing partner, J. H. Everett is ten percent writing and ninety percent rewriting. It's great fun, pushing the words around like puzzle pieces, making the sentences cleaner and tidier. There are piles of things that have to be organized too, flow, structure and word count.
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Then the editing starts, all all the nit-picky grammary bits, commas and spelling and such. That polishing part goes at the end, like wallpaper or molding, for now I'm just working on the foundations of stories. My goal is to get the reader to keep turning the page and keep reading. Is the story exciting enough? I hope so!
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I don't think of myself as a writer. Mark Twain is a writer. Roald Dahl is a writer. I'm an illustrator that writes for fun, a dabbler, an ama, amature, (oh how do you spell that?) amateur... writing for the love of the thing.
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And I encourage you to write too. Put those stories down on paper. Go on! Writing is strong giddymaking stuff once you give yourself permission to do it.
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What do you like to read and what do you like to write?
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Marilyn.
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Storyteller: Here again, milady?
Scheherezade: These people sit for hours, just listening.
Scheherezade: It's a miracle.
Storyteller: People need stories, more than bread, itself.
Storyteller: They teach us how to live, and why.

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Costume finished. Most adorable assassin on the block.
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Had a great time making it.
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Hope you get lots of treats!
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Marilyn.
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Nothing on Earth so beautiful as the final haul on Halloween night. ~Steve Almond

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Working away here on a paper toy book for Sterling that's due out next year. Here's a little peak at one of the flourishes from a toy theater.
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Marilyn.

I love getting photos from people who have made my paper toys. It's always neat to see where, like messages in a bottle, the toys have sailed to in the world. Here is a nice note from the Merwin family in China...
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Thank you for the instructions on how to make the Japanese Koi fish. We live in China so driving down to Party City or the like to pick up a few party decorations is not an option for us. This past week we made a bunch of your koi fish to use as decorations for our son's fish themed 4th birthday party. He loved them!
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Waving from the other side of the world!
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Marilyn
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http://www.thetoymaker.com/AroundtheWorld/Japan/TMKoiKites.html
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Ever year I use my meager sewing skills to put together a Halloween Costume for the boy. In past years he's been Indiana Jones, Link from Legend of Zelda, Arthas the Lich King from World of Warcraft and last year a headhunter.
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This year, Altair from Assassin's Creed. Wish me luck,
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Marilyn.

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The boy is having a sleepover for his birthday party.
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It's 11:32PM. Imagine this time five.... or five hundred....
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They're all talking at the same time, watching five videos and karaoke singing to Boston all at the same time between practicing the Napoleon Dynamite dance.
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Thank you whoever invented headphones.
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Marilyn.