Vancouver artist who started craze for making toys from drawings
Petti Fong catches up with Wendy Tsao, whose idea for turning drawings into personalised toys has gone global and been picked up by companies
When Wendy Tsao's son came home from kindergarten with a stick-man self-portrait, it sparked an idea that would become a global trend: she would make a soft toy based on his drawing.
"He recognised it right away and said, 'That's me, I made that.' That's when I decided to make toys based on children's drawings," she says.
Born in Montreal to Taiwanese immigrants, Tsao trained as an architect before relocating to Vancouver and becoming a landscape painter. That job, however, didn't fulfil her, she says, but collaborating with children to make soft toys hit the spot.
"I could use the right side of my brain and the left. It was, to me, practical and also artistic because I was interpreting what was in the drawing," she explains.
In 2007, Tsao opened Child's Own Studio in her Vancouver home. Charging C$49 per toy at first, she raised the price to C$249 (HK$1,475) as demand grew.