Judith Hope Blau, a painter whose accidental detour into bagel art — necklaces, napkin rings, wreaths and candleholders fashioned from, yes, bagels — led to a career as a children’s book author and illustrator and a toy designer, died on May 4 at her home in Eastchester, NY. She was 87.

She started by masking bagel puppets and bagel necklaces for her young children. She painted them with smiling faces, and sold hundreds of them. Her daughter brought one of the bagel necklaces to school, and it was such a hit that Mrs. Blau’s husband suggested she show a bag of them to a Bloomingdale’s buyer. The store ordered 100, and thousands were sold in the first few months. The publisher McGraw Hill asked her to write a children’s book about her bagels. For Fieldcrest, she designed bedding and socks with bagel characters. She made plush bagel toys.

A local newspaper declared that “Bagelmania was contagious and incurable.”