The pictures of the animals may be mounted on one of the remaining
sheets of heavy paper, so they will be stiff enough to stand up alone.
That is one way of making enough animals to fill the Ark, but there is
another way that will take a little longer, but will prove ever so much
more fun.
The loose pictures from the book of animals should be fastened to the
table with thumb tacks, or tacked to a drawing board. A square of white
tissue paper is then laid over each, and the outline of the animal’s
body is traced with a soft pencil. When the tracing is finished, the
tissue paper is carefully lifted off and laid with the plain side up
on some stiff white cardboard. The outline is then retraced with the
same soft pencil leaving a pattern of the animal on the cardboard. The
animal is then cut out, and painted with the nursery water colors.
[Illustration: GOING ABOARD THE ARK]
You will need to be very clever, indeed, to paint the animals so
that they will look as if they were just fresh from the jungle. There
must be a tawny lion colored with brown that has a great deal of yellow
ocher mixed with it. The panther must be orange with big yellow spots,
and large green eyes. The tiger’s eyes must have yellow mixed with the
green paint and his coat is yellow with orange stripes. The bear is
brown and the kangaroo is tan.
There should be two of each kind of animal. Now how shall you make
them stand up and walk like real, live animals? Some very tiny bits of
wood may be glued to their feet. That is one way of making the animals
stand. Another way is to make a narrow ring of the same cardboard from
which the animals were cut. The animals’ feet are then glued to this
ring, and they will really stand.
A boy will be able to make more animals than he can count,--leopards,
monkeys, zebras, elephants, as many as he can find patterns for in his
toy picture books. And it will prove such fun to draw them and paint
them that he will be kept busy for many rainy afternoons.
HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN UNIFORM
Every boy needs to be a soldier, once in a while. There are so many
brave deeds to be done and so many cowardly things to fight, and so
much dark to walk through courageously, and so many strange dogs and
cats, and shy little girls to protect with all the gallantry of those
old, old knights who lived in the story-book days. A soldier boy is
never late for school, and he never, never forgets to do an errand. He
goes to bed alone every evening at eight, even if the stairway is dark,
and there is no light in the upstairs hall to chase away the ghosts.
He never lies, and he is always cheerful. He knows that being brave
and gallant and true is just as much a part of a soldier’s duty as
marching, and drumming, and saluting Old Glory.
It isn’t easy to be a soldier though in a plain, everyday suit of
clothes, made of homespun perhaps, and patched, and dingy brown in
color. A real soldier suit cut and fitted the right size for a boy
costs more money than there is in the boy’s tin bank. What is the boy
going to do if he wants more than anything else to be a soldier and he
hasn’t enough money to buy himself a suit?
Any boy will be able to make the soldier trappings shown in the
picture, and when he puts on the cap, and the shield, pins the epaulets
to his shoulders and sticks the play sword in his belt, he will be
ready for the life of a little soldier. He can work or play cheerfully,
and when it comes Saturday, or Washington’s Birthday, he will be the
envy of all the other boys as he leads them in a fine parade, dressed
in his gay, home-made soldier things.
Suppose we make the soldier’s cap first. The diagram marked Fig. 1, 2,
3, and 4, shows just how to do the construction. A bright red cap will
be fine for the soldier, or a blue one just the color of the blue field
in the flag. There is a kind of tough, half-heavy paper called book
cover paper. One can order it from a stationer’s shop or a printing
factory at a cent or two a sheet. Some sheets of this will make the
boy’s own cap and enough for all the other soldiers in the regiment.
A piece of paper that measures fourteen by twenty inches is the
foundation for the soldier cap. Fold the two narrower edges together
until they touch, and crease the paper through the center as shown in
Fig. 1. Then with the paper still folded, make a second fold as shown
by the line in Fig. 2. This line forms a guide line for the next two
folds which make the point of the cap. Lay the papers, open, as in Fig.
1, on a table with the folded edge at the back; fold each half of the
back edge down along the line made by the last folding. Then fold up
and crease the lower open edges forming the rim of the cap. The rim
should be glued down to make the cap firm and strong. A feather can be
made by fringing strips of red or blue crépe paper and twisting them
around a narrow strip of cardboard which is glued inside the rim of
the cap. A turkey’s feather will do just as well, or a bunch of hen’s
feathers, or a cockade made of red, white, and blue ribbons to decorate
the cap.
A boy can find a splendid shield pattern in the back of the dictionary.
Copy it, and enlarge it until it is the right size to cover a boy’s
shirt bosom. Then draw it on heavy white cardboard, and cut it out. A
good size for the shield will be eight by ten inches. When it is cut it
can be decorated with stars and stripes with colored pencils or paints
as shown in the picture. The stripes are drawn carefully with a ruler
and filled in with color; one red and one white. The blue ground above
the stripes is dotted with stars cut from gilt paper and pasted on.
Two holes are punched in the sides of the shield, and a bit of cord is
strung in by means of which the shield may be hung around a boy’s neck.
It will make his heart beat faster and give him a whole lot of courage
every time he looks down at its brave stars and stripes.
Now for the sword which looks like a formidable weapon in the picture,
but is really not dangerous at all. Every boy knows how to roll a
narrow piece of paper, and make a lamp lighter. The sword that is
part of this home-made soldier suit is made in just the same way. Cut
some narrow strips of the book cover paper and join them with glue
until there is a long strip. Roll this strip of paper tightly, in lamp
lighter fashion, until it is fifteen inches long. Then press it flat
between heavy weights. Roll a second strip of paper for a length of six
inches and glue it to the broad end of the sword as a handle. These
swords are so delightfully easy to make that a boy will want to roll a
dozen after he has made his first one, and he can arm himself with as
many paper poniards as an Indian chief has arrows in his quiver.
[Illustration: (A) PATTERN FOR SOLDIER’S CAP (B) THE FINISHED UNIFORM:
CAP, SHIELD, SWORD AND EPAULETS]
The soldier’s epaulets are just five by two inch strips of the book
cover paper cut to fit a boy’s shoulders and decorated with fringed
red and blue tissue paper. They can be pinned to the soldier’s coat
shoulders with safety pins and will make an ordinary play suit quite as
military in appearance as any uniform.
When the boy soldier is dressed in this home-made uniform, which will
be even more effective than any which is for sale in a toy shop, he
will be ready for any adventure in addition to the brave prowess of
everyday life. Perhaps he and the other boys will want to take one of
mother’s old blankets and two or three clothes poles for a tent, and
tramp as far as the woods for a day of real scouting. Every soldier
has a knapsack for carrying provisions and this play soldier will need
one, too. A large, flat box makes a fine knapsack. Inside can be packed
a bundle of sandwiches, two or three apples, a doughnut or two, and a
piece of pie or a big slice of pound cake. When the box is packed, tie
it securely with a length of cord, and have one end of the cord for a
strap by means of which the knapsack is hung across the soldier’s back.
Roll a square of old blanket and tie to the top of the box just as a
real soldier fastens his blanket to his knapsack, and the make-believe
soldier in cap, epaulets, and shield can draw his sword and start off
in search of any adventure.
JOINTED TOY ANIMALS. HOW TO MAKE THEM
They will really do “stunts,” these toys in the picture. The
grasshopper will hop if you stand him up on a table and give him a
chance. The turtle will crawl along much faster than an ordinary, live
turtle. The crocodile will follow you so fast that you will surely be
eaten by him unless you hurry. What fun it is going to be to play with
these live toys, but first a child must make them, and as many more as
he likes.
Clear a low table on which to work and find some heavy cardboard or
thick water color paper from which to construct the animals. Bring
also, a pair of strong scissors, a sheet of tracing paper, a soft lead
pencil and the box of water color paints you found in your stocking
last Christmas. These are all the tools and material necessary for
making a barnful of animals. Ask mother for some porcelain collar
buttons to fasten the animals’ legs to the bodies. The laundry man
brings so many of these useless studs every week and a crop of them
will be fine for jointing the animals. If one cannot find enough
collar buttons, a box of tiny brass paper fasteners will serve very
well instead.
[Illustration]
Every boy knows how to draw a few animals, at least free hand. If he is
clever enough to be able to do this just by watching the horses out in
the street, or the tiger in the Zoo, or the kitten who sits in front
of the nursery fire, washing her face, so much the better. He will
not need any patterns. The child who finds difficulty in sketching an
animal free hand will have to trace his patterns from a book, or a toy
animal. Often one of the nursery toy animals may be laid flat on the
cardboard and its outline drawn and cut. Noah’s Ark animals, if they
are large, make excellent patterns for a child to copy. If one has no
toys of the right size, the tracing paper may be laid over the picture
of an animal in a farm picture book, or a book that tells about the
jungle, or a book on Natural History. When the outline of the animal
has been neatly traced on the tracing cloth, it should be transferred
to the cardboard from which the animal is to be made. When a child has
obtained a clear outline in this way, he may next proceed to make the
animals alive.
First, he must decide just the location of the animal’s joints. Where
are the tiger’s paws fastened to his legs? Where are the grasshopper’s
knees? Where, hidden underneath his shell are the turtle’s funny little
flat feet attached to his body? Then, using the pattern which has
just been made, a new pattern of the creature’s body is made, then a
pattern of a leg, a tail, an ear, and these sections are all cut from
the cardboard, separately, with scissors or the sharp jack-knife. In
cutting out legs and paws, they should be made always a little longer
than the original pattern to allow for the joint by which they are
fastened to the body. As soon as all the parts of an animal have
been cut from the cardboard, they should be laid in place and holes
punched with a coarse needle or an awl at the joints. If the animal is
a huge one, the collar buttons may be slipped in these holes to hold
the sections together. In the case of the toy creatures shown in the
picture, paper fasteners were used. When these joints have been made
the toys will stand or sit, cock their ears or wag their tails, leap or
run--in fact they will do anything a boy wishes.
The paints come next. It will be great fun to make the toy animals just
the right color. A tiger may be such a gorgeous yellow with bright
green eyes and black stripes. The grasshopper may be either green or a
warm brown, and the turtle’s house which he must always carry around on
his back should be painted gray.
These jointed animals may be persuaded to act out the children’s
favorite stories and will furnish a new kind of fun for rainy
afternoons in the house.
[Illustration: JOINTED CARDBOARD ANIMALS]
Little Brer Rabbit can be easily made of white cardboard from the
pictures of Peter Rabbit or the rabbit pictures on an Easter card. Then
Brer Rabbit and Old Man Terrapin may act out on the nursery table the
famous race that Uncle Remus has told us about. A shoe box may be
used for a miniature stage if it is placed on its side on a table, some
scenery is painted in at the back and a little cloth curtain hung at
the front. Through a hole in one end the jointed animals may be put in
and they will perform most acceptably for an audience of dolls.
Two children playing together, or two groups of children can each make
a set of jointed animals and then pose them to illustrate a favorite
story, the other child or group guessing the story illustrated.
Many other plays will suggest themselves when one has a set of animals
which are really alive and which a child has made, all himself.
YOUR OWN CIRCUS
It is going to be a circus small enough to fit in any house. In fact,
it will be possible to put it within the boundaries of an old table.
Because you can’t always have an outdoor show is just the reason that
you are going to plan this fine, diminutive one in the house. It may
take several days to get it ready, but once your indoor circus is
finished, you will find it almost if not quite as interesting as a real
one.
First, find an old table somewhere to be used as a circus ground. A
pine table will serve nicely, and if you can find some old green muslin
with which to cover it, you will discover that it looks exactly like
the grass in the field where the real circus is held. Tack the muslin
to the under side of the table top so that it will not wrinkle and
interfere with the circus parade. Now you are ready for the rope fence
which always encloses a circus ground.
In the four corners of the table bore, with a gimlet, through the
canvas, some holes that are just the right size to hold dowel sticks,
five inches long. You can buy these dowel sticks of a carpenter in
foot lengths at a few cents each. Glue the posts in the holes which you
have bored in the table and also bore extra holes for two more about a
foot apart in the front of the table. These last little posts are for
the gate to your circus ground. When the glue has set and the posts
are perfectly dry, tie cord to one, near the top, and then stretch it
to another, knotting it, until you have finished the rope fence that
encloses the circus ground. If you like you can have two or three rows
of cord, and you can print a little circus sign to pin to the gate. It
may read:
THE GREAT AND ONLY ANIMAL SHOW
Clowns, Wild Beasts, and the Biggest Elephant
in the World.
Performances Every Afternoon and Evening.
Admission, Adults, two pins, Children, alone,
one pin.
COME ONE. COME ALL!
All around the edges of the bill you can draw pictures of wild animals
with your colored pencils.
The circus ground will look very much pleasanter if you have a few
trees standing about on the edges, and these trees will be useful,
also, to tie some of your wild beasts to.
Meat skewers will do nicely for the tree trunks if you fringe ever so
many narrow, doubled strips of green tissue paper, and wind them with
it, fastening the fringes to the meat skewer with mucilage. The green
paper flutters in the air quite like real foliage in the breeze on
circus day, and the little trees will stand up nicely if you stick the
end of each skewer inside an empty spool, glueing it there so that it
will stay in place.
Did you think that you were never coming to the tent for your circus?
Well, here it is, and the picture shows you just how to construct it.
You will need to enlarge the diagram several times the size which you
see in the picture, but that is easily accomplished by means of your
ruler and lead pencil. Use some sort of tough, firm paper for the tent.
Water color paper will be splendid because you can get out your paint
box and paint pictures of wild men and palm trees and animals on the
sides. If you have no water color paper, use brown bristol board. The
latter makes a fine stiff tent. Cut out the top and sides as carefully
as you can, bend them, and glue or paste them together. Then stand the
tent up in the center of your circus ground.
[Illustration: Pattern for Circus Tent.]
The animals, next.
There are patterns for them, too, which you will see in the picture and
which are so simple as to be very easily enlarged. The animals can be
made of the same kind of paper which you used for the tent, and then
painted, the elephant gray, the camel a soft brown and the deer a dull
reddish color, or you can cut them out of wood. This is perhaps the
better way. Use thin pieces of very soft, white wood. An excellent wood
is holly or soft pine, in the thin sheets which are used for jig saw
work, and for making picture puzzles. Draw the pattern of the animal
which you wish to make first very carefully on your piece of wood. Give
your best jack-knife two or three turns on a grindstone so that it will
be nice and sharp, and then go to work cutting the animal, not your
fingers. Make as many animals as you can, and glue their feet to tiny
blocks of kindling wood so that they will stand. Touch them up a little
with paint, too, to make them look wilder.
If you want cages for your animals use empty spool boxes, covers and
all. Cut bars in the cover of each box with your jack-knife, stand the
animal inside and put the cover back on. The box rests on cardboard
wheels which are glued to the long, narrow side of the box.
A clever boy will be able to invent the acts for the circus. One can
rig up trapezes and flying swings and tight rope appliances very easily
by using strings and spools. One can paint flags of all nations or cut
them from colored tissue paper to float from the roof of the tent, and
this little home-made circus will be so attractive that all the other
boys will want to make similar ones just as soon as they see it.
BEAD WORK FOR BOYS
There is not a boy but has gazed at the alluring Indian suits in the
toy shop windows, wishing that he were able to buy one. It is so much
easier to give a proper war whoop, and scare a few of the fellows,
and execute a wild war dance, or even sit by a camp fire in the woods
telling stories, if only he is dressed like a real, live Indian.
Why not make one’s own Indian suit?
It is perfectly possible for a boy to make himself a fine Indian shirt,
fringed, and decorated with beads; a pair of beaded moccasins and a
bead belt in which may be thrust a scalping knife, a bow and arrow and
a few other implements of war. He may hang all his scalps to the belt,
too.
The only materials needed for the suit will be three or four large
chamois skins--or two yards of brown denim if the chamois seems
too expensive for the young Indian’s pocketbook--some red and blue
porcelain beads which may be bought in strings at any dry goods store
for a few cents a string, a spool of heavy cotton thread, and a little
patience. With a coarse needle, and a pair of scissors the boy will
be ready for work. Making an Indian suit will fill a great many rainy
afternoons full of fun.
The bead belt is the best part of the suit to begin with because a boy
can experiment with designs as he weaves the beads together, and he
will be able to form an idea of the pattern he wishes to use when he
embroiders the shirt and the moccasins. One will need a bead loom on
which to make the belt. These looms may be bought at a toy shop, but
that is not really necessary. An old box will do quite as well for a
loom. The belt in the picture was started on the cover of an old shoe
box, and a cigar box with the cover and the bottom removed makes a fine
bead loom. In making a loom from a wooden box, very small screw eyes
may be put in the ends of the loom, about one quarter of an inch apart
to hold the threads. In the card board cover shown in the picture, the
warp threads--those are the lengthwise threads in the weaving--are held
in place by pins to which they were knotted at the ends of the loom.
Fourteen threads are strung on the loom for a section of the belt,
as tightly as the card board will allow of their being stretched. A
needle is then threaded with the coarse cotton thread, and the end is
tied to the warp thread at the top of the loom at the left. The needle
is then brought out to the right below the warp strands, thirteen red
beads--one less bead than the number of the warp strands, remember--are
strung on the thread, and the beads are pressed up between the warp
strands so that one bead comes between every two threads. The needle
is then run back from right to left through the beads _above_ the
warp threads. This makes one row of beads securely woven to the warp.
For the second row of beads, six red beads, one blue one and six more
red ones are strung, the blue bead forming the beginning of a simple
design. The third row has three blue beads in the center, the fourth
has five, the fifth three, and the sixth one, completing the design. A
row of red beads is then woven in, after which the unit of design was
repeated.
Many different designs will suggest themselves to the boy bead weaver.
A checker board pattern of squares may be used, there may be a plain
border at the edges of the belt, or a Greek fret may be introduced with
charming effect.
When the section of the belt shown in the picture is finished, it may
be removed from the loom, the ends of thread being tied securely
about the last row of beads. A second section is strung on the loom,
blue beads being strung first with a design of red in the center. Four
sections, two red and two blue, may be sewed together to complete the
gay little Indian belt.
[Illustration: Indian Shirt Pattern.]
Now for the Indian’s shirt. The pattern which is shown in the picture
should be enlarged according to the scale, one and one half inches to a
foot. If chamois skin is used for the shirt, probably one large and two
smaller skins will need to be joined to give enough material, but if
the shirt is made of brown denim, the pattern may be laid on a length
of the cloth, without piecing, and the shirt is then cut. It will not
be necessary to sew any seams in the shirt. It is folded over at the
neck opening, and tied on the small boy with narrow strips of leather
indicated in the picture. One strip of leather is tied under the arms,
and the other about the hips. The bead embroidery finishes the neck and
sides of the shirt. To do this embroidery, a needle is threaded with
coarse linen thread, and knotted at the end. Starting at the right of
the neck, and close to the edge, the needle is brought through to the
outside of the shirt. Three beads are then strung. They are held down
close to the shirt and the needle is thrust through the cloth to the
inside again. The needle is then brought through, close to the first
stitch, three more beads are strung, and the embroidery is continued.
Red and blue beads should be alternated to form a design. This stitch
described is the simplest one for a boy to use and it is most effective
also, being the stitch used by the Indians when they embroidered their
own shirts, moccasins, and leggins.
In starting the embroidery for the sides of the shirt, the bead border
should be started about two inches from the edge, this margin being
fringed carefully with sharp scissors after the beads are all sewed on.
A design of beads, which may be varied according to the taste and skill
of the boy who makes it, may ornament the front and the back of the
shirt.
[Illustration: Moccasin Pattern.]
[Illustration: Finished Moccasin.]
Moccasins sound very difficult to make, but here is a pattern all in
one piece, with no troublesome uppers and soles to be fitted together.
Chamois skin should be used, if possible, for the moccasins, or the
light weight leather which may be bought at a craft shop for art work
and can easily be sewed. When the pattern of the moccasin which is
shown in the picture has been enlarged according to the scale--three
inches to a foot--it is laid on the leather or chamois, and a pair
of moccasins is cut out. It will be found easier to embroider the toe
before the moccasin is sewed. The sewing which holds the moccasin in
shape is done with very coarse thread in an over and over stitch.
Narrow strips of leather may be used, also, for the joining, in which
case, holes should be punched with a stiletto and awl to admit of
the leather being passed through the material. After this joining is
completed, the flap indicated in the picture is folded over on the
dotted lines, and it is embroidered in the same pattern used to finish
the neck and sides of the shirt.