Artistic author publishes paper toys

Alicia Robinson

Before Legos or Erector sets, maybe even before wooden blocks, people

made toys out of paper.

Marilyn Scott-Waters is hoping to create a resurgence of the

old-school toys with a new book she designed. She runs a popular

website featuring her paper toy designs, and she recently published a

book of them, which can be bought online and in two area stores.

A painter and graphic designer, Scott-Waters used to work in the

corporate world, jetting around the globe as an art director for a

Nike subsidiary.

After having a child, she wanted to be with her family more, and

when she was laid off from her job with a motorcycle-wear

manufacturer, she decided she was done with the rat race. She began

freelancing clothing-design work from home and started making paper

toys.

“I love to draw, and I just draw all the time,” Scott-Waters said.

“I never really got to do what I wanted to do [in my job], so I

started making these little things and sort of hiding them in the

closet.”

She designed an array of paper toys, including an airplane, a tiny

puppet theater, an assortment of boxes and houses, and a bus. The

toys can be downloaded free from Scott-Waters’ website, and they can

be easily colored in, cut out and glued together by children and

adults.

The website has been up for about a year and has gotten more than

144,000 hits, and Scott-Waters has been inundated with e-mailed

thanks and praises. She’s even had people try to pay her.

The book came about because she wanted to offer the toys to people

who don’t have access to a computer or the Internet. The toys are

printed in bright colors on glossy cardstock, and the book also

includes literary quotes and background stories on the characters

depicted by the toys.

The old-fashioned feel of the paper toys has attracted customers

who want an activity that’s creative and doesn’t need batteries.

“It was so professionally done, and it was such a throwback to

something to do at home with your kids, something your kids could do

with other kids,” said Julee Morris, who owns Long Beach children’s

bookstore Once Upon a Story. “I do have a lot of customers that look

for something like that.”

She’s carried the books for about two months and has probably sold

a dozen of them, she said.

The books are also available at Paris to the Moon, a gift store on

Santa Ana Avenue in Costa Mesa.

“They’re so cute,” Paris to the Moon store manager Kerri Judd

said. “They’d be darling stocking stuffers.”

People all over the world have written to Scott-Waters about the

toys, and she’s excited about that. She’s already working on her

second book.

“I find that a lot of people like to give [the toys] to people as

gifts to cheer them up or take them to ladies in the nursing home,”

she said. “It was wonderful to be able to do that. It’s kind of like

being Santa Claus.”

Paper toys are somewhat of a family tradition for Scott-Waters. As

a child she and her siblings made comic books and dollhouses out of

the craft supplies their mother, a first-grade teacher, always kept

around.

Now she and her husband and their son meet at the kitchen table

once a week for “Monday model night,” when the men of the family make

robots or other model kits and Scott-Waters works on paper models.

For her, family time is part of what her book is about.

“This isn’t a book just to give kids [and say] ‘Go off in the

corner and make this,’” she said. “This is a book for ‘Let’s sit down

and figure this out.’”

Scott-Waters’ book can be purchased and paper toys can be

downloaded for free at https://www.thetoymaker.com.