In the shoebox today was a letter from viewer Roselene Anderson of Norfolk, Va., who sent along a suggestion and the props to go with it. After wallpapering a room in her home Roselene found that she had a fair amount of the paper left over. Rather than stash it away she spent some evenings cutting out the floral designs from the paper
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figure A). When she had a goodly amount of the cut-up and cutout designs she arranged them along the open space between the top of the windows and the ceiling in an adjoining room and secured them with wallpaper paste (
figure B). In some cases she had the flowers and vines trail down the side of the window for a small distance . In so doing, she not only used up some of the wallpaper, but subtly gave a coordinated look to the adjoining rooms and filled up some unattractive empty space. Roselene mentioned that she thinks this is a good way to obtain a stenciled effect without the expense or talent required for stenciling.
Another item in the shoebox today was a copy of an e-mail that had been sent to me referring to a tip I'd given on the show some time ago. I had mentioned that I usually cover the top and bottom edges of the book jacket with clear tape when I buy a new book to keep it from becoming tattered and torn. Viewer Heidi Congaltin wrote:
. . . as a rare bookseller, I want to note that that practice is very bad. Many books become valuable for many reasons. Who would have thought that the book, 'Dairy Foods Cookbook' published by Rodale Press would now be worth $250 simply because the woman who put it all together won a Pulitzer Prize?
Apparently anything that scars either the book or the jacket lowers it's potential dramatically, including embossing your name in it, unless, of course, you are very famous. So, you would like to keep your books as pristine as possible just in case and your relatives might thank you some day! Heidi also mentioned that in the library they use Mylar covers for their books.
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