Toca Tailor: Unleashing kids' creativity

Many parents will agree their iPad can be an invaluable tool to both entertain and educate their young children.

If you're looking for something to keep the kids engaged while traveling this holiday season, Toca Tailor is a new $1.99 app that fuses the fun of playing dress-up with the freedom of turning anything in your environment into a pattern that can be used to create new clothes for your characters.

Designed for kids age 4 and up, and playable on iPad, iPod touch or iPhone, there are four characters to make clothes for: a boy, girl and two cartoon animals (a lynx and a sloth). The first step is to select what article of clothing you want to work on, such as a shirt, pants, dress or accessories (such as a hat, bow tie, glasses and shoes). Tap around to select various styles, colors and materials from the huge assortment of options, and then use your fingertip to tweak the length of the arms, legs, and so on. You can also pinch and zoom in on patterns to make them larger or smaller (such as making large or small colored dots for a sweater).

Now here's where things really get interesting: Right from within the app you can turn on your device's camera, capture something around you — be it a brick wall, sofa cushion, pet hair or the bottom of your jeans — and use that as a print for your outfits. Or even take a picture of your face, and use it on your character's t-shirt or blouse. Because you can create a pattern from anything around you, and then modify it when it's imported into the app, kids can really use their imagination to make a one-of-a-kind creation.

The characters will animate from time to time, too, such as making a silly face, and they'll make cute sounds, too.

When you have an outfit you like, take a picture with the default background or superimpose your cartoon character into your real environment (using the iPad's camera) and snap a picture of your character in your room or standing beside a sibling or friend.

The only issue is that photos you take aren't automatically added to your iPad's Camera Roll unless you first go into the Settings area and enable this feature. Similarly, you can't access photos in your Camera Roll to make prints with, until you allow for this. Both of these caveats are explained in the "Letter from the Play Designer" area of the app (under "For Parents").

Overall, Toca Tailor is a very clever and fun digital toy that offers many hours of playtime for young kids.