I grew up in the 50′s. Times were different then. It was long before Wal Mart and Target, we didn’t drive to the city very often and when we did, we didn’t drive on the interstate and for most of my childhood my mom stayed home with us.
We didn’t do a lot of crafts but the crafts that we did were memorable and special.
One of the things that I have learned over the years is that the same things that amazed me as a child, usually amaze the children in my life. So today I want to remind you that sometimes the most basic art is the best.
If you have wax paper, crayons, a pencil sharpener and an iron, you create something amazing.
Use the pencil sharpener to shave the crayons, sprinkle the crayon shavings between wax paper, iron on a low setting and “Voila” magic!
My mom always let us use our Wax Paper Creations for place mats which made our dinner just a little more special.
What are some of the basic crafts that you enjoyed when you were a child?
My mother used to do a lot of projects with me, she was quite crafty. Some of the ones I remember doing aren’t even around anymore I don’t think. We used to make those sun catchers, where you put the little plastic pellets in the metal frame and then bake in the oven to melt. She went through a ceramic phase were we were painting ceramics and then she would take them to get glazed and fired. Baking projects were fairly common to as I remember.
We used to collect the prettiest Autumn leaves, and iron them between two pieces of waxed paper for placemats and to hang in windows. We’d also put interestingly shaped leaves under paper and rub the paper with the edge of a crayon to raise the image of the edges and veins…”rubbings”.
And we’d make sock puppets just by sewing buttons onto old socks, and adding yarn hair. After awhile, I started stuffing them and sewing another sock onto the opening to make snakes. And then cut other socks for legs and experimented with how to make the socks take on animal shapes. The stuffing was old nylons (and eventually, pantyhose).