An unfinished Boxcraft Toy.
Among the boxes given me were three very large ones. One was deep and wide. It came from the milliner’s. It was not a bandbox, but a box used to pack hats away in. In it I kept all the boxes that came to me. The small ones I packed inside the large ones. It was a simple matter, after that, to find what I needed when I wished to make a table, or a chair, or a punch show, or a school-house.
Another box that was given me was wide and flat. Into it I put all pretty papers that came my way—lace-paper, pinwheel paper, sheets of waxed sandwich paper and glacine book covers, crape paper, spools, cotton, pencils. Everything that could lie flat went into this wide, flat box, to be stored till needed. This box packed into the first box easily.
The third box was broad, and square, and deep. Into it I packed the playthings I had made after I had finished playing with them. It fitted into the side of the first box above the wide and flat one. All these could be put out of sight in my play-closet when night came and it was time to pick up.
These boxes I called my treasure boxes. I hope you will find three like them and keep your boxcraft materials as I kept mine, for Happy Thought, Nimblefingers, and Play told me about the plan, and I think it is a splendid one.
If you have some pretty samples of wall-paper, you can easily cover your treasure boxes with them. There might be some wall-paper like that in your play-room. If so, this would be the very thing. Then, the boxes may be placed anywhere you choose in your room.
These treasure boxes are not meant to hold large toys. It is the little toys that you will like best to use in boxcraft play. The toy figures and the animals will pack into very small space. The corrugated cardboard for roofs, the green crape paper for grass, the pretty shells, pebbles, and artificial flowers for garden building, take but small space.
The tools for your boxcraft, scissors, and paste, and paint-box, may go into the large, deep treasure box too.
Here in this book you will find the toys that the fairies have shown me how to make. There are many, many more. You can try the magic craft of the fairies for yourself in your own way. If your boxes are not always exactly like mine, make them answer by adapting the general plan of the toy to the box which you have. Learn to make much out of little. That is the motto of boxcraft play. THAT is what Cinderella’s fairy godmother did when she changed a pumpkin into a golden coach. That is what fairies always do! They find magic in little things—so suppose you try it too!