Recycled Action Toys
The handmade toys on display in this page are part of my new and current work in progress - (october 2011)
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Despite the simplicity of these Action Toys, their design is in keeping with the accessible principle that distinguishes my toy-making activities, maintaining alive their aesthetic appeal and environmentally friendly making process.
The element of "risk" is incorporated in the creative process of these newborn pieces, which combine natural and manmade materials, allowing legs and arms to be movable parts. This workshop provides a greater level of challenge compared to the others because different hand tools need to be used, for example:
- the use of drift wood requires a hammer and nails to assemble many different parts
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a junior hacksaw to prepare the pieces of wood
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a gimlet to make guide holes
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a file to smooth the edges
- pliers to hold smaller parts like the little nails before hammering them into the natural material.
Additionally, the legs and arms of the toys are worked pieces from disassembled wooden fruit boxes commonly found in any local market.
Any parts of the wooden crate, including the nails can be turned into a part of a Recycled Action Toy.
PVA glue is used occasionally to join small wooden parts, which cannot otherwise be bound together with nails.
Pieces of insulating tape, which are firmly wrapped and stretched around the thin wooden parts create splashes of colour and prevents the thin wooden parts from cracking.
Finally, ordinary scissors suitable for children have been used to shape all the bits of plastic.
The Recycled Action Toys are mainly a combination of bits of unwanted wood and parts of any type of used soft and hard plastic bottles like containers for shampoo, body wash, washing up liquid or hand softening cream and milk bottles too, etc.
If you have a little experience or if you are not working on a sample to copy, the design of these toys is not always easy to visualize in the mind of its maker. Most of the time, it takes a while to imagine alternative ways to use bits of natural wood in combination with plastic.
My advice to the "newbie maker" is to handle the objects in order to "absorb" perception and sensations, gradually becoming aware of the qualities of the material and the possible ways to transform and shape it.
It is also good to look at the whole object from different angles and start to visualise the three dimensional qualities of the object.
Do not be afraid to make the first cut in the wood or to make an incision in the plastic, it is good to experiment and learn from trial and error. Make the most of it and use it as strategy for your learning and as a stimulus for your imagination.
Once you have made the different parts, try to put them together creatively, exploring the multiple possibilities to combine them.
Use stereotypes to communicate meanings or characterize the object.
With experience you'll become quicker and quicker in visualising the final outcome.
Furthermore, if you have an extensive knowledge of the cross-cultural traditional toy field, you will have a better chance "to find the toy you did not know you wanted to make".
My main source of inspiration is Getulio, a Brazilian toymaker living in Rio, struggling to keep alive his art practice - see this video on YouTube.
Additionally, I saw many other similar samples at the La Lucertola (The Lizard) centre in Ravenna (Italy), a sustainable educational creative museum of ideas and toy-making practice - where I am also volunteering and developing my professional activity.
Last but not least, Mr Giancarlo Perempruner has been the first one to design efficient traditional toys using disassembled parts of wooden crates. Most of his collection of handmade toys can be found on permanent display at the "Museo della Cultura Ludica" of Torino (Italy).