In
my sorting and sifting at my childhood home, I am coming across a few
vintage crafting bits and pieces. This jar of glitter in the Sprinkle
Sparkle brand was one of my first finds. Vintage glitter!
(And isn't that Sprinkle Sparkle label so much fun!?)
Then I have found some other nifty things, like stickers and seals.
One day I found a gorgeous vintage Christmas gift box ⇓ that contained just 2 items;
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| This title was on one side of the box. Guess what originally came in this stunning box? Men's socks! |
The box contained the stickers shown below...
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| I
actually remember using stickers like these. I loved them and wanted
to use them much more liberally than I should have. These are the type
of stickers one had to lick. |
... and the above sketch, done on a used envelope. Opening this box was like opening a time capsule.
What do you suppose the sketch was for? I can tell you, because I happen to know. The time capsule took me back to the late 1950s and early 1960s, and my mother's preparations for the Methodist Church Christmas Fair. I described the project in the post I wrote about this fair: "The base for each pin was a smooth oval of wood. This was long before
the days when such wooden shapes could be purchased pre-cut; my parents,
as I recall, cut out the shapes themselves and then sanded them
smoothly. Then tiny hemlock cones, yellow tansy heads, and red-orange
bittersweet berries were artfully arranged on the wooden base."
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| This pin, though not perfectly preserved, survived the years. I guess some of the tansy heads must have been painted green. |
The time-capsule effect happened many times, but another box, just an
ordinary box this time, went back to the very same era as this one.
I wrote about this in the same church fair post: "Another year my mother made small coin purses for kids out of felt. The
purses buttoned closed. They resembled kittens, and I think there may
have been bunnies or puppies as well."
Back in the day when I was in elementary school, children often carried coin purses in a pocket. Lunch money and milk money both involved coins, so the coin purse kept them safe.
I am not sure that any of the purses made by my mother at this time still exist, but I did find the magazine where she got the idea and the patterns -- the very first
McCall's Christmas Make-It Book, purchased for $1 in 1958. And as you can see in the box of bits and pieces, there were many more designs than puppies and kittens. There were birds, and clowns, and snow boots, and who knows what all else. I scanned a couple of the pages to show you:
The pages in this section were pink, but I chose to scan them in black and white so they would be a bit easier to see and read.
Oh, the memories brought back by these vintage crafting bits and pieces! Hope they've triggered some delightful memories for you as well.
