Our favorite startup of 2012 was the re-crafting of kids drawings into huggable plush toys. Children love to be creative, draw and imagine all kinds of wonderfully colorful animals, toys and everything in-between. Child’s Own Studio, takes these wonderful creations and for a small fee manually creates stuffed plush toys in resemblance of the artwork. Crayon Creatures has a similar offering, but instead of plush toys they provide 3D printed figurines as sculptures to keep safe.
Materializing the imagination of children isn’t just for your little ones, but we find adults even want to re-live their childhood by sending drawings they saved while growing up as well. Kids make so much artwork filling fridges, living rooms, and workspaces, but with the rise of 3D printing, these pieces can be turned into real-life objects – Crayon Creatures does just that.
The figurines are produced with “photo-realistic color to maintain the energy and attitude of a child’s expressive drawings.” Using sandstone material, the made to order pieces are hard, slightly brittle and rigid but before production the made-to-life drawings are digitized by a skilled 3D artist. Get your figurine for $130 plus $20 with international shipping.