If no scroll-saw is to be had, a pretty pair of uprights are made by gouging a narrow stripe around the entire form, at equal distances from the edge, and painting with gold paint a small stenciled form on the middle of each, also filling the stripe with the same material. For the stencil use a simple one of your own design, made according to directions given in another place in this book. Should you and an older sister desire to unite in making the present, she making the curtain, and you the woodwork, no fancy design would be required. A simple bracket, with well-proportioned supports nicely curving in front, and well sand-papered, oiled, and varnished, would be all required, as the curtain would hide the entire form.
THE CONE AND TWIG BRACKET.
One of the prettiest home-made brackets the writer ever saw was in an old-fashioned country house, in a thinly settled region of Massachusetts. The maker, a quiet, gentlemanly boy of fifteen, was a cripple, and being obliged to remain much of his time within-doors, had utilized these spare moments, and surrounded himself with many beautiful things, made from materials which nature with so lavish a hand bestows upon us all. This poor crippled boy loved the fields and meadows, lakes and woods, with an intensity of feeling utterly inconceivable to his more robust brothers and sisters; but his gentle, kindly manner won their hearts, and the brightest and best the farm afforded, whether fruit or flowers, minerals or young animals, found its way into “Ned’s sanctum,” as his little room was called. Even the young calves and colts, were brought around to his window, that he might admire their rather doubtful beauty, and nearly every brood of newly-hatched chickens spent several hours of their early life in a basket on the table at his side. One day, the children brought home some beautiful spruce and larch cones, and the little sufferer began, with the true artist’s sentiment, to revolve in his mind how he could put them in a form, which should always be in sight from his place by the window. At last he thought of the bracket, and immediately set to work drawing designs for the foundation. When these were quite satisfactory, he asked his brother to saw the different pieces from old cigar-box wood, and nail them together. The bracket was very simple in outline, but the arrangement of the cones, half nut-shells, and tiny twigs, was extremely artistic and pretty. They covered the two supports and the under-side of the shelf, forming little pendants, like stalactites in some hidden cave. These were glued firmly in place and afterward carefully varnished.
THE PEBBLE VASE.
On this bracket was a little vase, made by the same deft fingers. A broken wine-glass held the water, and the vase was formed around this, of that inexhaustible material, papier-maché, studded all over with bits of colored glass and bright pebbles gathered from the sea-shore. From earliest spring till the frost claimed the last lingering blossom, this vase was filled with the fairest flowers of the seasons, and, with the unique little bracket, seemed like a bit of the delightful out-door world transferred to the pleasant corner of the sunny little room.
THE CONE AND TWIG HANGING-BASKET.
The fall after his experiment with the bracket, Ned made a hanging-basket with the same materials, using a wooden bowl for the foundation. This was also a success, but not as uncommon as the bracket. The cocoanut-shell, cut evenly around near one end, forms a good material to build upon. In either this or the bowl, be sure to bore three holes near the top, at equal distances from each other, to attach the chains or strings to the basket. This must be done before the cones are glued in place. If a fourth hole is made near the bottom, and filled with a round-headed peg which can be removed at will, but which forms a part of the design, and receives its share of the final varnishing, the plants growing in the basket will present a much more flourishing condition, as the surplus water can be readily drawn off from their roots.
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PAPER BOXES.
Many years ago, when our mothers were little girls and ready-made playthings were not as common as at the present day, during the long winter evenings they were obliged to invent their own amusements, and it was not uncommon in a large family where there were several girls and boys, for them to take turns in providing games for certain evenings in the week. Even the little ones contributed their share to the general amusement, and it was from one of these little girls, now grown to be an old gray-haired lady, that I first learned to make these simple boxes.