Paper Mats

[Ill.u.s.tration: PAPER MATS]

Take a square piece of thin paper (Fig. 1), white or colored. Fold it in half (Fig. 2), and then again in half (Fig. 3), and then again from the centre to the outside corner, when it will be shaped as in Fig. 4.

If you want a round mat, cut it as marked by the dotted line in Fig.

4; if square, leave it as it is. Remember that when you cut folded paper the cuts are repeated in the whole piece as many times as there are folds in the paper. The purpose of folding is to make the cuts symmetrical. Bearing this in mind cut Fig. 4 as much as you like, as suggested by Fig. 5. Perhaps it would be well to practice first of all on a rough piece. The more delicate the cuts the prettier will be the completed mat.

Paper Boxes

[Ill.u.s.tration: PAPER BOXES]

Take an exactly square piece of paper (cream-laid note-paper is best in texture), and fold it across to each corner and press down the folds. Unfold it and then fold each corner exactly into the middle, and press down and unfold again. The lines of fold on the paper will now be seen to run from corner to corner, crossing in the middle, and also forming a square pattern. The next thing is to fold over each corner exactly to the line of this square on the opposite half of the paper. When this is done, and the paper is again straightened out, the lines of fold will be as in Fig. 1. Cut out the triangles marked X in Fig. 1, and the paper will be as in Fig. 2. Then cut along all the dotted lines in Fig. 2, and stand the opposite corners up to form the sides and lid of the box: first A and B, which are fastened by folding back the little flaps at the tip of A, slipping through the slit at the tip of B, and then unfolding them again; and then C and D, which are secured in the same way.

Cardboard Boxes

Cardboard boxes, of a more useful nature than paper boxes, are made on the same principle as the house described on p. 239, and the furniture to go in it, as described later in the same chapter. The whole box can be cut in the flat, out of one piece of cardboard, and the sides afterward bent up and the lid down. Measurements must of course be exact. The prettiest way to join the sides is to use thin silk instead of paper, and the lid may be made to fasten by a little bow of the same material.

Sc.r.a.ps and Transfers

Paper boxes, when finished, can be made more attractive by painting on them, gluing sc.r.a.ps to them, putting transfers here and there, or covering them with spatter-work (see p. 275). Sc.r.a.ps can be bought at most stationers' in a very great variety. Transfers, which are taken off by moistening in water, pressing on the paper with the slithery clouded surface downward, and being gently slipped along, used to be more common than they now are.

Directions how to make many other paper things will be found on pp.

243-262.

Ink Sea-Serpents

Dissolve a teaspoonful of salt in a gla.s.s of water, dip a pen in ink and touch the point to the water. The ink descends in strange serpent-like coils.

A Dancing Man

[Ill.u.s.tration: A DANCING MAN]

The accompanying picture will show how a dancing man is made to dance.

You hold him between the finger and thumb, one on each side of his waist, and pull the string. The hinges for the arms and legs, which are made of cardboard, can be made of bent pins or little pieces of string knotted on each side.

Velvet Animals

The fashioning of people and animals from sc.r.a.ps of velvet glued on cardboard was a pleasant occupation which interested our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers when they were children many years ago. A favorite picture was of a boy and a St. Bernard, in which the boy's head, hands, collar, and pantaloons, and the dog, were made of white velvet painted. The boy's tunic was black velvet, and its belt a strip of red paper. The dog's eye was a black pin-head. The whole was mounted on a wooden stand with wooden supports at the back, one running up to the boy's head and the other to the tip of the dog's tail. With some sc.r.a.ps of white and black velvet, and a little patience and ingenuity, one could make all the animals on a farm and many in the Zoo.

Hand Dragons

All the apparatus needed for a "Hand Dragon" consists of a little cardboard thimble or finger-stall, on which the features of a dragon have been drawn in pen and ink or color. This is then slipped over the top of the middle finger, so that the hand becomes its body and the other fingers and thumb its legs. With the exercise of very little ingenuity in the movement of the fingers, the dragon can be made to seem very much alive. The accompanying picture should explain everything.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HAND DRAGONS]

Various games can be played with the fingers. Tiny caps and hats can be made, features drawn with ink on the fingers and little tissue paper dresses made. A whole play can be acted or sung by these tiny finger marionettes.

Other Uses for Cardboard

Once you have begun to make things out of cardboard, you will find no end to its possibilities and should be in no more need of any hints.

After building, furnishing, and peopling a dolls' house, a farm or a menagerie would be an interesting enterprise to start upon. E. M. R.

has a stud of ninety-two horses, each named, and each provided with a horse-cloth, a groom, and harness. She has also several regiments of soldiers and a staff of nurses, all cut from cardboard and painted.

She chooses her horses from _Country Life_, or some such paper, and copies them. Another enthusiast has a cardboard theatre in which plays and pantomimes are performed.

It might be added that cardboard figures can be made to stand up either by leaving a strip of cardboard at the bottom, in which teeth can be cut and bent alternately one way or the other, or by slipping the feet into grooves cut in little blocks of wood.

Cardboard Cut-Outs

There are a great many cut-outs issued nowadays, which may be bought for a small sum at any toy shop. Perhaps the best among these are "The Mirthful Menagerie," "The Agile Acrobats" and "The Magic Changelings."

"The Mirthful Menagerie" when properly cut out and pasted together, make a lot of animals that have _thickness_ as well as length and height; "The Agile Acrobats" can be made to a.s.sume almost any position, and in "The Magic Changelings," Little Red Riding Hood, for instance, can be changed into the wolf, and then back again!

Books of cut-outs are also made, in which the books are intact after the cut-outs have been removed. "The New Mother Goose" gives ill.u.s.trations of many of the Mother Goose rhymes to be cut out and pasted together, and has a story and other pictures besides. "The Electric Fire Fighters" is on the same order, only in this case the pictures to be put together are of the Electric Fire-Engine, the Electric Water-Tower, etc. They are all easily made, and are fascinating games for stormy weather, or for indoor games at any time.

Particulars of "Snap" cards and other home-made cards will be found on pp. 77 and 78.

Kites

In China, and to some extent in Holland, kite-flying is not the pastime only of boys, but of grave men. And certainly grave men might do many more foolish things. To feel a kite pulling at your hands, to let out string and see it climb higher and higher and higher into the sky--this is a real joy. For good kite-flying you want plenty of room and a steady wind; hence a big field is the best place, unless you are at the seaside when there is a wind off the land, in which case you can fly your kite from the beach. To make an ordinary, serviceable kite, take two laths (which can be bought for a penny from any builder), one three feet long (AA in the picture) and the other two feet (BB). Screw BB with two screws exactly in the middle, at right angles to AA, at C, a foot from the top. Then take some stout twine of good quality and make the outline of the kite by tying it securely to the ends of each of the laths. Next take the thinnest unbleached calico you can find, stretch it fairly tightly, and sew it over the strings. (Or strong but light paper will do, pasted over the string.) Make a hole (D) through the upright lath and calico, midway between the cross-piece and the top, and another hole (E) about fifteen inches below the cross-piece, and tie a strong string, two and a half feet long, to these holes, with a loop (F) in it a foot from the top hole.

To this loop you will tie the string of the kite. The tail (G) is made of pieces of paper about six inches long, rolled tightly and tied at distances of a foot. Its exact length will depend on the strength of the wind and can be determined only by experience, but, roughly speaking, it should be five times the height of the kite, or, with the kite which we are making, fifteen feet long. It is best to have the tail in two or three pieces, and then it can be lengthened or shortened at will. For instance, if the kite plunges in the air and will not keep steady, the tail is not long enough; but if it will go up only a little way, the tail is probably too long. Be sure to have plenty of string, carefully wound, so that there will be no hitches in paying it out. When starting a kite you need the help of some one who will stand about thirty yards away, holding the kite against the wind, and throw it straight up when you have the line tight and give the signal. If it does not rise it may be well for you to run a few yards against the wind. At first you must not pay out line very rapidly, but when the kite is flying steadily you may give it, also steadily, all the string it wants.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A KITE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "TO FEEL A KITE PULLING AT YOUR HANDS--THIS IS REAL JOY"]

Kite Messengers

A messenger is a piece of cardboard or paper with a good-sized hole in it, which you slip over the string when the kite is steady, and which is carried right up to the kite by the wind.

A Simple Toy Boat

The following directions, with exact measurements, apply to one of the simplest home-made sailing-boats. Take a piece of soft straight-grained pine, which any carpenter or builder will let you have, one foot long, four inches wide, and two inches deep. On the top of the four-inch side draw an outline as in Fig. 1, in which you will be helped by first dividing the wood by the pencil line AB, exactly in the middle. Then turn the block over and divide the under four-inch side with a similar line, and placing the saw an eighth of an inch each side of this line, cut two incisions right along the wood about a quarter of an inch deep. The portion between these two incisions forms the keel. Then carry the line up the middle of the end A, and repeat the incisions as along the bottom, these making the boat's stem-post.

Next turn to the top again, and make a line, similar to the dotted line CC in Fig. 1, about three-eighths of an inch inside the outline of the boat, and then carefully hollow out with a gouge everything inside this dotted line. It must be very carefully done; it is better, indeed, to err on the side of not hollowing her out enough, and then a little more can be removed afterward. Next shape the outside, first with a saw and then with a chisel, again using the utmost care. Try to give her a fine bow, or "entry," and a good clean stern, or "run." If the boat were cut in two crossways in the middle, the section ought to resemble that in Fig. 2. This flat "floor" will be graduated away to nothing at bow and stern. Next fix on the lead keel (see K in Fig. 3), which should be a quarter of an inch thick, a quarter of an inch deep at the bow, and three-quarters at the stern, fastened on with four long thin screws. Next make the deck, which should not be more than an eighth of an inch thick and should fit very closely at the edges.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A TOY BOAT]

The mast (C), which should be about three-eighths of an inch in diameter at the foot, and should taper slightly, must stand one foot above the deck, and pa.s.s through the deck four and a half inches from the bow. First pa.s.s it through the hole in the deck and place it in position, leaning a little back from the bows; then slip up the deck and mark the place in the bottom of the boat where the mast rests, and there fix, with four small bra.s.s screws, a block of wood with a hole in it, into which the mast can be firmly "stepped." Then on the upper side of the deck, just in front of the mast-hole, screw a small eyelet. This is to hold the line called the foresail sheet (L), but as the deck is only an eighth of an inch thick you must place a little block of wood under the deck, into which the eyelet can be screwed.