Shoebox: Wall Hanging, Tray Favors, Kids' Art

Carol Duval shares a variety of creative crafts from the shoebox.

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There were a number of goodies in the Shoebox today, and fortunately we had time enough to share most of them, starting with a card and some photographs from Baishali Sen Choudhury from Stamford, Conn. Though Choudhury did not send the card as a contribution to be shown, it so interested me that I couldn’t resist. I was absolutely positive that the card was made using fabric. It wasn’t. The "fabric" was actually a layer of tissue paper that was applied so neatly and so well, it looked to be one with the card stock. The item that Choudhury wanted to show, however, was the photograph of a wall hanging she made that looked for all the world like a stitched fabric patchwork piece. It was actually a painting on canvas, and it looked wonderful from any direction — upside down or sideways as well as the way it was intended to be shown. Choudhury is obviously not only a versatile crafter but an excellent one.

Then from Eva Rae Walters of Paola, Kan., an example of something I had all but forgotten about, a tray favor. It’s been so long since anyone has even mentioned tray favors, I wasn’t certain that anyone was making them anymore, but Eva Rae proved me wrong. Both of the items that she sent in were used as tray favors at one of her local hospitals. One was a bookmark made by cutting fabric and fusing it onto cardstock. A tassel was added at the end.

The second item that she included was a clever little refrigerator magnet made of fabric cut-outs that she fused onto flexible foam. A small sticky magnet strip was added to the back. Both very quick and easy and inexpensive — all of the requirements for a tray favor.

Item number three in the Shoebox today was one that made us all smile. Sharon Horner of Missoula, Mont., operates a family day care, and she sent in pictures of some of her young artists at work. Some are very young — 2 and 3 years old — so obviously they have not yet learned to paint inside the lines. What she does is give the youngsters paper cups with paint in them and a paint brush, and lets them go to town on a strip of white poster board she has taped to the wall. After they have painted great spots of color and the paint has dried, she takes them down and cuts them into different shapes. On the day she sent us the photos, she had cut out horses. From a different painting, she cut the tails and saddles; then she put them all together so each child had a horse. She had assumed they would put them aside to take home later. Instead they were played with all day. Apparently there was much horsing around, because a couple of horses had to have their tails replaced.