Hi,

In Lorna, she and her aunt and cousin make what sounds like an amazing screen. Has anyone ever made one of these? And what do they look like?

Cheers,
Joyce

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It's fun to have fun, but you have to know how - Dr Seuss

Like these:

here.

I wouldn't know where to start, but people like Miss Bingley in Pride and Prejudice - young ladies with a lot of money and nothing to do with their time! - were very big on making screens .

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We really must stop eating like this ...

Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.

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hi,

I've seen embroidered and painted screen before, but the one Lorna etc make is of pictures they've painted and glued to the screen and then glazed over. It sounds really fun and I would love to try and make a small one but using scrapbook pieces.

I can't paint or embroider so this is the only way I can do it. I just need to know what sort of screen to use - wood? Don't want to make one and the pictures start to fall off.

cheers,
Joyce

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It's fun to have fun, but you have to know how - Dr Seuss

Try looking on google under "scrap screen", Joyce - plenty of images out there and you may even come across someone who's made one and blogged it or whatever. They were usually wooden, but were sometimes covered with canvas or had canvas panels. It may even be that you could buy a miniature one from somewhere that sells dolls' house stuff, and try out a small version first. The other thing is that it doesn't have to be a screen unless you especially want to start with one - boxes work well too (flat surfaces are obviously easier) - the technique is découpage, and it was used to cover all sorts of items.

Following on from what Noreen said - if you google decoupage and youtube (or go to youtube and enter decoupage) hundreds of how-to videos will appear of how to cover many and varied items....

Crafty blogland, as it is somewhat bizarrely called, is a very generous place, where people are happy to share their skills and techniques in great detail, both on blogs and by making videos.

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Cestina's dolls houses - Just the Right Shoe

There - I knew you'd have the practical advice to hand, cestina! Thank you for adding it to my theoreticals.

thanks for your advice!

I will give it a shot and if it works out I'll post pictures of the results here. If not, the project will never be heard again other than a mysterious fire in the backyard.

Cheers,
Joyce

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It's fun to have fun, but you have to know how - Dr Seuss

*Links* to pictures here rather than the pictures themselves please, Joyce

*Ruth with mod hat on*

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to be nobody but yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
e.e.cummings
http://stitchwords.blogspot.co.uk

I'm sure that somewhere in Chalet School land, I think during the later part of the Armiford period, girls are making, not fire screens, but scrapbooks, using pictures and other scraps from many sources. The completed books were given to the San, or to a children's ward. Does anyone remember the details?

Yes it's an on-going activity of the Hobbies Club though I think it may even have started before the Club itself was formed. I seem to remember someone commenting that they wondered if such books would have continued to be popular with children later in the series....

There is a fairly clear description of how they were made in one of the sections on hobbies, which of course I had to peruse in detail when I wrote the article on Tom and her houses.

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Cestina's dolls houses - Just the Right Shoe

Sure. But I think that's a bridge which will not need to be crossed for a while.

Cheers,
Joyce

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It's fun to have fun, but you have to know how - Dr Seuss

There's a fairly detailed description in Peggy:

"Sitting next her (Polly Winterton) was Julie Lucy, who was not gifted artistically, and who was busy with a super-fine scrapbook of the kind that always sold well. The pages were made of cotton material, starched stiffly, and stretched tightly on a board. As each sheet was finished, it was varnished over with clear varnish, so that it could be sponged when necessary. When enough sheets had been done, they were strongly sewn into covers that some of the others made of pasteboard, covered with remnants of flowery cretonne."

Julie uses cards she had collected but I remember an episode of Oprah when a woman was showing the audience how to do arts and crafts like this and she suggested taking the dustwrapper from hardcover books and cutting them up! I screamed "No!" at the screen. Can you imagine all our lovely hardcover Chalet books being chopped up?

What's wrong with cutting up magazines or cards? Why would you cut up books?

Cheers,
Joyce

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It's fun to have fun, but you have to know how - Dr Seuss

Well, not the actual books, just the dustwrapper/ dust jacket, but that's more than criminal enough to a book collector! On the other hand, I know that some people (even authors and book-illustrators) used to remove the dust jackets from their books (and throw them away) as a matter of course, so if she'd grown up with that notion, she probably felt that she was doing something quite virtuous.

It's like people who turn books into clocks or lamps or tables or other things, such as this. Alternatively you can google 'book art' and see what else people to do poor, innocent books.

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The writer's credo: 'Sometimes you've got to sacrifice the things you like' (Delta Goodrem - Born To Try)