How to Make a Paper Boat 1882

Source:

Cassell. Cassell’s Book of Indoor Amusements Card Games and Fireside Fun. London: Cassell, Petter, Galpin and Co., 1882. Print.

Craft a Scissor Case 1885

While not big on giving detailed instructions, many (not all) of the “ladies handwork” projects did at least come with a picture of the intended result:

Source:

Lupton, Frank M. The Farm and Household Cyclopaedia. New York: F.M. Lupton, 1885. Print.

Decorating Lesson from 1886

In between directions for making elaborately embroidered calling-card trays and decorative toilet-bottle cozies, I found this gem: instructions for making shabby-chic decoupage pots!

With all the double-negatives, I’m still working out whether it’s supposed to look Japanese when it’s done – or saucy?

Scraps, known as reliefs, chromos or die-cuts, were printed by chromolithography, stamped out and embossed.

After printing of the scrap the sheets were coated with a gelatine and gum layer which gave the finished sheets a glossy surface, embossing came next giving the scrap their three-dimensional look.

The final production process was to pass them through a punching / stamping press to cut away the unrequired areas of paper from the design leaving the individual images connected by small ladders, often bearing the name or initials of the maker.

Source:  http://www.scrapalbum.com/pat1.htm

Source:

Lupton, Frank M. The Farm and Household Cyclopaedia. New York: F.M. Lupton, 1885. Print.

Dyed Easter Eggs 1870

Looking for a way to decorate your eggs for the Easter celebration that doesn’t involve kits, stickers and commercial characters? Here are some techniques from 1870 that you might consider!

 

You can have a nice brown egg with some simple onion-water. Of course, if you wanted brown eggs, you could just buy brown eggs.

Want blue eggs? A sprinkle of powdered indigo and sulfuric acid will do nicely.

Mixed colors that blend and contrast? All you need is colored silk fabrics that can be cut up, some logwood (we talked about logwood in the Laundry post), a paper grocery bag, needle, thread, and some turmeric from the spice cupboard. Ready? Set! Go!

See you in ten minutes when I get back with my store-bought kit….

 

Source:

Croly, J.C. Jennie June’s American Cookery Book. New York: The American News Co., 1870. Print.

Chalkboard Paint 1917

Over the last couple of years, chalkboard paint has boomed in popularity in the crafting community. There are chalkboard memo boards, chalkboard menus, chalkboard ornaments, chalkboard seating cards, chalkboard roosters, owls, horses and pigs. But what about before  Hobby Lobby, Michael’s, and JoAnn Fabrics stores all carried it? We still had chalkboards, right? Were they grown? Mined? Excavated from Egyptian tombs?

Here is how it was done:

Emery is a mineral mined from the Greek Islands, consisting mostly of aluminum oxide. It is used as an abrasive. Uses include polishing with emery cloth, filing fingernails with emery boards, and as stuffing in pincushions to keep pins sharp. In its most finely ground form, it is called emery flour.

Lampblack is soot collected from oil lamps and used as a colorant.

Glue from this era varied in uncountable ways, so for our purposes today, I have chosen one of the most basic forms:

Flour of emery is still available commercially. If you’d like a more authentic, rustic look to your chalkboard projects, you could start firing up some oil lamps over the next couple weeks in preparation for your next project – now that’s shabby chic!

Sources:

Ross, W.S. Secrets Revealed. San Francisco: W.S. Ross, 1917. Print.

Youman, Alexander E. A Dictionary of Every-Day Wants. New York: Frank M. Reed, 1872. Print.