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Monday December 22, 2003

What a doll! Holiday card’s all dressed up for fun

by dan pine
staff writer

A holiday card you can play with? Mazel Tov!

That’s the whole megillah with the Trudy Janet gift card paper doll collection that is a hit with kids and adults alike. Trudy Craig is the Marin-based artist behind the series, which premiered last year and has since expanded into several holiday and seasonal themes. Now, just in time for Chanukah, Craig launches her Mazel Tov collection.

Each four-page gift card features the redheaded cartoon scamp Trudy Janet, who is suitable for cutout and can be dressed up in the costumes and accessories included as well. For Chanukah, little Trudy comes complete with a dress of royal blue and lavender, a menorah, dreidel, gelt and a special latke recipe on the back.

Not Jewish herself, Craig wanted to get all the details right. After meticulous research, she then sent the card designs to Chabad of Marin Rabbi Hillel Scop for his OK.

“Rabbi Scop looked at the designs and sent them back corrected,” recalls Craig.

“I had had the Hebrew letters upside down on the dreidel, and he also said I should put lit candles on the menorah.”

So how does it feel to be kosher? “It feels great,” says Craig with a laugh.

The cutout card series is by no means the artist’s first brush with success. Born in Los Angeles, Craig moved to Marin in the mid-’70s. Over the years, she has enjoyed numerous public and private commissions — mostly trompe l’oeil murals — notably at the Casa Madrona Hotel in Sausalito, the Marin Designers Showcase and Mama’s Restaurant in San Francisco.

Her paper-doll cottage industry started two years ago. “I made a holiday card for friends and family with Trudy Janet on it,” she recalls. “She’s based on me when I was a little girl. Everyone flipped for it. It was so much fun, I kept thinking of more titles.”

Today there are eight Trudy Janet holiday cards and several special-event themes (birthdays, tea parties, weddings). The Mazel Tov package, which retails for about $6, includes a paper doll with costumes for Chanukah, Sukkot, Purim and Passover as well as Trudy Janet’s cat, Pumpkin Pie.

Craig herself is pleased that she created something for kids from another time and era: It doesn’t require electricity, computer screens, hand controllers or digital explosions.

“It’s very satisfying in this day and age,” she notes, “to have given kids a contemplative, quiet activity.”

The Trudy Janet Mazel Tov gift card paper doll is available locally at the Toy Chest, 1000 Fifth Ave., San Rafael; Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera; or online at www.trudyjanet.com.

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