Making Wooden Animal Toys for Profit

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PHOTO: MOTHER EARTH NEWS STAFF
Tips on how to make wooden animal toys from left over scraps of wood.

You can create your own small business by making wooden animal toys to sell at crafts fairs.

My husband and I operate a “pocketsized” woodshop in which we produce easels and small wooden blocks for children. And, like everyone else’s shop, ours always seems to have a box sitting in the corner someplace . . . filled with scraps of wood that are too small to use in our regular items.

Unlike everyone else, though, I began (back in 1967) designing a line of simple animals that could be constructed from precisely the shortends and other “waste” left over from our main projects.

The animals were an immediate hit. They combine happily with blocks and other toys, they stack, they encourage creativity, and the little folks who play with them generally find them educational too. We’ve also been pleased to learn that parents and teachers usually consider one of the wooden figures worth a whole pile of plastic ones (there seems to be sort of an “heirloom factor” involved here somewhere).

Wooden Animals: Collect Your Tools and Raw Materials

  • Published on Nov 1, 1977
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