What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes Part 30

[Ill.u.s.tration: SOFA AND ARM-CHAIR (The corners must be fastened to the sheet by very narrow strips of paper.)]

[Il.u.s.tration: WOODEN BEDSTEAD]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WARDROBE (Join the sides AB and AB, and then bend the top down, glueing the flap C to the back of the wardrobe.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DRESSING TABLE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WASHSTAND]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROCKING-CHAIR, TOWEL RACK, AND CHAIR]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHILD'S HIGH CHAIR AND COT (In the chair the lines AB and BA must be cut. In the cot the four pieces marked A are cut out on their sides and bent down to form legs.)]

Paper Dolls

Paper dolls are not as good to play with as proper dolls. One can do much less with them because they cannot be washed, have no hair to be brushed, and should not sit down. But they can be exceedingly pretty, and the keeping of their wardrobes in touch with the fashion is an absorbing occupation. Paper dolls are more interesting to those who like painting than to others. The pleasure of coloring them and their dresses is to many of us quite as interesting as cutting out and sewing the clothes of ordinary dolls.

Making Paper Dolls

The first thing to do is to draw the doll in pencil on the cardboard or paper which it is to be cut from. If you are not good at drawing, the best way is to trace a figure in a book or newspaper, and then, slipping a piece of carbon-paper (which can be bought for a penny or less at any stationer's) between your tracing-paper and the cardboard, to go over the outline again with a pencil or a pointed stick. On uncovering the cardboard you will find the doll there all ready to cut out. It should then be colored on both sides, partly flesh color and partly underclothes.

The Dresses

The dresses are made of sheets of note-paper, the fold of which forms the shoulder pieces. The doll is laid on the paper, with head and neck lapping over the fold, and the line of the dress is then drawn a little larger than the doll. A small round nick to form the collar is cut between the shoulders of the dress, and a slit is made down the back through which the doll's head can be pa.s.sed. After the head is through it is turned round. (Of course, if the dress is for evening the place which you cut for the neck must be larger, and in this case no slit will be needed.) All the details of the dresses, which can be of original design, or copied from advertis.e.m.e.nts and fashion plates, must be drawn in in pencil and afterward painted. Hats, trimmed with tissue-paper feathers or ribbons, are made of round pieces of note-paper with a slit in them just big enough for the tip of the doll's head to go through. The ill.u.s.trations on pp. 260 and 261 should make everything clear.

Other Paper Dolls

Simpler and absolutely symmetrical paper dolls are made by cutting them out of folded paper, so that the fold runs right down the middle of the doll. By folding many pieces of paper together, one can cut out many dolls at once.

Walking Dolls

Walking ladies are made in that way; but they must have long skirts and no feet, and when finished a cut is made in the skirt--as in the picture--and the framework thus produced is bent back. When the doll is placed on the table and gently blown it will move gracefully along.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WALKING PAPER DOLLS]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PAPER MOTHER AND CHILD, WITH CLOTHES FOR EACH]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A PAPER GIRL WITH SIX CHANGES]

Tissue-Paper Dresses

Dresses can also be made of crinkly tissue-paper glued to a foundation of plain note-paper. Frills, flounces, and sashes are easily imitated in this material, and if the colors are well chosen the result is very pretty.

Rows of Paper Dolls

To make a row of paper dolls, take a piece of paper the height that the dolls are to be, and fold it alternately backward and forward (first one side and then the other) leaving about an inch between each fold. Press the folds together tightly and cut out the half of a doll, being careful that the arms are continued to the edge of the fold and are not cut off. Open out and you will have a string of paper dolls.

Other articles to be made from paper and cardboard will be found on pp. 284-291.

PLAYHOUSES OF OTHER PEOPLES

It is not in the least necessary to confine yourself to making playhouses that are like the houses you live in or see about you, for with a little ingenuity you can construct bits of all sorts of strange countries right in your play-room. In one of the schools in New York City the children study geography and history of certain kinds by making with their own hands scenes from the places about which they study.

One of the most valuable materials for making these playhouses is ordinary modeling clay. You can buy fifty pounds for from fifty cents to a dollar, and with this you are equipped to make almost anything you can see in pictures. Put the clay (if bought dry) into a jar, pour over it clear water, and stir it up with a stick until perfectly smooth and about the consistency of hard b.u.t.ter. The first thing to do is to make a supply of bricks for building. This should be shaped like real bricks and about two inches long. Smaller ones are also possible if you wish to have your settlement on a very small scale. These should be made as regularly as possible and as nearly of the same size. After a little practice one becomes very expert in this simple art. They should then be dried in the sun and are ready to use, though they must be handled carefully. If you can obtain terra-cotta clay, and have it baked hard you will have real bricks that will outlast your play-time.

A Pueblo Settlement

Suppose now that you have been reading about the life of the Pueblo Indians in our Southwest, and you have a picture of one of their singular settlements. The accompanying picture shows what was done in the way of constructing such a settlement by a cla.s.s of school children, none of whom were over eight years old. You can model little clay Indian inhabitants and paint them as you please, to represent their brown skins and bright-colored clothes. If you can have a box with a little earth in it to set before your Pueblo village you can sow wheat seed, or mustard, and model Indians working in the fields with their crude plows. Anything of which you can find a picture can be reproduced. Indian villages and camps are easy to make and interesting. And once you are started on Indian life it may be fun to make yourselves Indian costumes. The costumes in the picture shown were made by the boys who wear them. By looking closely at them you can copy them.

An Esquimau Village

Another cla.s.s in the same school painted their bricks white to represent blocks of snow and made an Esquimau village. This is fascinating and easy to do. Or, the rounded huts can be modeled all in one piece directly from the clay. Any book describing the life of dwellers in the Arctic region will tell you how they make their houses and you can make tiny imitations of them that will be infinite fun to construct and the admiration of all your friends when finished.

Cotton-wool can be used for snow (powdered isingla.s.s also is pretty), and bits of broken mirror for ice-ponds. Little sleds can be made on which to put your Esquimau hunter, who may be one of the white-fur-clad dolls so cheaply bought in toy-stores. Or you can model a little doll just the right size to be entering the door of your tiny rounded white hut.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN ESQUIMAU SLED]

[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIAN COSTUMES (_Facing page 266_)]

A Filipino Village

Or if you get tired of living near the Arctic circle you can sweep your table clean of Esquimau dwellings and construct a Filipino village. For these you do not need bricks (which can be given a rest and put away in a box) but little splints of wood the same size and length which you can make yourself with a knife. Make a little thin floor of damp clay (but drier than you use it to model with) and stick your upright pieces in this in the shape of the house you wish to make. When the clay has hardened they are held quite firm and you can make a wattled hut by weaving long straws or gra.s.ses in and out to form your walls. A thatched roof can also be made of long gra.s.ses, tied in little bunches and laid close together all sloping down from the ridge-pole. Almost every magazine of a few years back has in it pictures of Filipino villages which will furnish you with models to copy. According to the size of the table or board on which you make your settlements you can have more or less extensive tropical country, surrounding your village. Mountains can be made of the clay, covered with moss or gra.s.ses to represent the jungle and a river with overhanging trees arranged with bits of broken looking-gla.s.s, and twigs with tiny sc.r.a.ps of green tissue paper glued to them for leaves.

The exercise of your own ingenuity in using all sorts of unlikely materials which you will find all about you is the best part of this game.

After you have decided to change the climate and character of your village, the clay used may be broken up and put back in your jar, wet again, stirred smooth and is all ready to begin again. Great care should be taken that it is kept clean, that bits of wood or gla.s.s be not left in it, or you may cut or p.r.i.c.k your fingers in handling it.

A Dutch Street

You cannot only wander from one climate and from one nationality to another, but from one century to another. If you are studying early American history nothing is more fun than to make a street in an old Dutch settlement. Your bricks are painted red for this. Almost any history-book will have pictures of one or two old Dutch houses which will show you the general look of them. They are harder to construct than the ruder huts of savages and may need to be held together with a little use of damp clay. It is interesting to try and reconstruct old Dutch Manhattan, from the maps and pictures, showing the bay and the walk on the Battery.

Or if you are interested in Colonial New England, make a settlement of log-houses with the upper story overhanging the first. On any walk you can pick up enough small sticks to use as logs after tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and measuring.

Other possibilities in this line are suggested below. You will have more fun in working them out yourself than if you are told just how to proceed. A Roman arena with gladiators fighting and a curtain which may be drawn to keep off the sun. A little fishing-village beside the sea (a large pan of water) with tiny nets spread out to dry and little walnut sh.e.l.l boats drawn up on the sandy beach.

A farmhouse, barn, pig-pen, dog-kennel, carriage-house and the like. A very pretty settlement can be made of this with fields of growing grain, brooks, water-wheels, etc.