This is a short video of a few of my favorite mazes that I have created. I have over 400 intricate mazes that I have hand drawn over the years.
How it all started
My sister and I were getting ready for a trip to Orlando Florida to go to Universal Studios and Disney World in 2000. We were really excited and could barely wait. Neither of us had been on a plane and it was going to be a 7-9 hour flight. So my sister and I came up with an idea of different things to keep us occupied during the long flight. She didn't want to buy a bunch of activity books. That's when the light went on in our heads. Why don't we make our own activity book. We came up with hang man puzzles, connect the dots, even a few word search puzzles. Both her and I love mazes so I tried to draw one to see what it would look like. I drew Mickey Mouse and it looked great. After that I started to draw a few more shapes from Disney and making them into mazes. I had about 20 mazes to put into our fun home made activity book.
Unfortunately my sister got very sick and ended up in the hospital just 4 days before we were supposed to go so we had to cancel our trip. Though that didn't stop me from making fun mazes. I started to make fun shapes into mazes, then random objects, flowers, birds, animals and building. In just over 3 years I had made over 400 mazes! I took a few years off from drawing them to go to back to school and work full time. I still draw mazes to this day and am planning to put all my mazes into an activity book that is only mazes. The book will be called 'M'AZING MAZES! The 'M' stands for My Marvelous Amazing Mazes. I just didn't like that title so I just took the 'M' from that and the 'azing' and formed 'M'AZING.
If I think I can draw a simplified picture from something I'll give it a try. I get ideas for mazes from everywhere. People give me ideas of things, going to that mall has a thousand and one things to draw, going on a hike, a movie, a coffee, a trip.... There are endless things to try to draw into a maze. From the simplest things like a star to a more complex design like a bird cage.
The most difficult mazes that I have made?
The most difficult ones I have encountered so far would have to be these three.. 3) snowflake, 2) plate of spaghetti and 1) a gumball machine.
The snowflake was difficult due to all the complex details of the flake to incorporate and make stand out as a shape yet being able to "split" it up to make the maze. The plate of spaghetti was a big challenge. the first attempt at that ended up looking like a ball of yarn. This is how the knitting basket came about. The second attempt turned into bales of hay and finally by adding meatballs I was able to get a lovely workable plate of spaghetti. The gumball machine was the fourth maze I made after the trip demise. I had it nearly done when my sister noticed that some people would be getting ripped off if this machine were real. I looked at it and realized that the gumballs inside the machine looked like they were cut in half. So I had to start over, it took probably 10 attempts and failures to get the gumballs to look right and actually be a believable gumball machine at the same time a workable solvable maze.
Who comes up with the maze names?
95 % of the names for the mazes my sister comes up with. The other 5% I name or someone from the general public. About 80% of the maze names have two meanings behind them. Let me explain.. the perfect example I can give would be the Christmas candles. In most homes and churches having three burning staggered candles are known as "candles of hope." So that is the name of this mazes, the second meaning is "candles" because they are and "of hope" meaning a prayer to get through the mazes without getting stuck. Another example would be the old oil lamp. "light my way" again, it's a lamp, it lights up. Second meaning "light my way" give light to get through the maze.
There are about 25% of my mazes that just don't have a name yet. Either the name chosen just doesn't sound right for the maze, the maze is new and hasn't been seen yet or we both are stumped on what to name it. This is when we ask others to help us. The longest time to name a maze would have to be a fish bowl with two goldfish swimming in it. My sis wants it named "just keep swimming" but I don't think the name fits it (also it's Dori's saying) The maze was completed 2 years ago and still has no name. If anyone has a great name for this fish bowl maze leave it in the comment box below. Your name (with permission) will be put in a special thanks area of the book when published.
