Arts and Crafts – some more.

Since posting last week I have carried on remembering other things we liked to make when we were entertaining ourselves indoors. Many of them involved paper and scissors.

We enjoyed folding paper into boat or hat shapes – the same method.

paper-boat      paper-people     paper-chain

We loved to cut out chains of paper people and at Christmas we made paper chains to decorate our bedrooms using gummed strips of coloured paper.

vintage_paper_doll

Paper dressing up dolls were really good fun. Sometimes they came in a box and were received as a present. Other times they were free in a comic. You cut the figure and clothes out yourself (taking care NOT to cut the tabs off!) then dressed the dolls in different outfits. The other thing we loved making out of paper were these things.

paper-fortune-teller We didn’t have a name for them but researching for an image on the Internet I found them described as paper fortune tellers.

The spinners you could make with cardboard and string were really good fun, especially if you took the trouble to colour them in with a bright pattern which went crazy when the spinner whizzed around. The ones which always seemed to work best, though, were the ones which came free with cereal packets.

fun-colorful-spinners.jpg

There was always spare wool in the house as my mum did a lot of knitting so making pom poms by winding wool around card discs was another childhood pastime – and one which I still enjoy doing!

making-pom-poms            mouse

The funny little picture on the right is showing how to make a mouse out of a handkerchief. I remember my dad showing us how to do this this when we were small.

Two more things I can recall are making perfume from rose petals in the garden and putting it into small bottles such as aspirin bottles. These were given to give to our mum and grandmothers. Also making brooches from a kit which contained a pin backing and felt shapes which we fashioned into flowers etc. My maternal grandmother, Nana, lived with us for the last few years of her life and was so good at putting a home made brooch on the lapel of her coat and dabbing on rose petal perfume before going to the village shop.

 

 

13 thoughts on “Arts and Crafts – some more.”

  2. We used to make little woollen dolls (or mascots in sports team colours) by winding wool firmly around the length of a cigarette packet, and also a matchbox. Then we slipped the wool off, and tied the cigarette packet “skein” in ways to make a head, waist, and two legs with feet. The match box “skein” was tied to make arms with hands, and slipped through the body of the other. Then we stitched eyes, a nose, and mouth on the head. They were cute. Did you make these?

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      • They were lovely. It’s over 50 years (!) since I last made one. I’d offer to do one now and post a photo, but I’m super-busy because I’m going travelling in November. I wouldn’t have time to try before December. I’d be happy to have a go then and send you more detailed instructions. They would make cute tree decorations or attachments to presents.

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      • We just called them woolly mascots, because we used to make them in school or team colours. I think my big sister learnt to make them at school, and she showed me. Perhaps they were a rarity? I’ve marked my calendar to remind me to acquire a firm cigarette packet (or something of similar size) and make one, with photos. Now I think about it, we may have made large ones by winding the wool around the cigarette pack lengthwise for the body, then crosswise for the arms, and little ones by doing the same with a matchbox. You see I need to revive a few rusty brain cells!

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    • I’ve been in the UK – London, mostly. Not at all exotic from your point of view! That meant I missed the recent large earthquakes in New Zealand. Since I’ve been back I’ve felt a couple of small ones, that’s all. I also tried making a couple of woolly mascots. If you email me: toutparmoi [at] gmail [dot] com I’ll send you instructions and a couple of photos of my efforts.

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  5. I played with everything in this post except for the hanky-mouse! 🙂
    Something else you might remember (for another post unless you’ve already written about them) were the magic painting books – a wash of plain water over them brought up the picture, do you remember those? And there were some with pictures that arrived seemingly ‘out of nowhere’ too, but with a scribble of pencil over them. Oh – and do you remember joining up numbers to make pictures? So many good memories!

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