I can’t recall where I picked this book up or even if it’s a hangover from my childhood, all I know is that every time I go a cull of my art books and ask,”Do I REALLY need to keep this one?”, somehow this book ends up back on my shelf. 🙂 Ergo, I thought it was about time for me to share it with you. My copy of McCalls Golden Do-It Book is getting a bit battered, the spine is loose, the pages a bit worn, but still the ideas are as real as anything. So much make and do within the pages of this book.
What do you get?
A number of different sections divide up this tome. Each section containing 2-8 projects, great for children 6-14 years old. (or later if so inclined). Littles might like to try their hand as well but will most likely need some older person’s help to make the projects turn out well.
- Crayons, Paint, Paper, and Paste
- Printing
- Sculpture
- Toys
- Weaving
- Needlework
- Dolls
- Music
- Puppets
- Gifts
- How-to Section
You may be wondering, have we even completed any of the projects? Well we’ve made cars and houses out of boxes, the lad for a while was big into paper craft, we’ve made boats and done some weaving. Do I have pictures? Um… no. That would have been on my hard drive (external) that crashed last year and we’ve been unable to recover the data. And well.. that’s that!
One thing I do want to try yet with my lad is making a seed painting and a yarn painting. I just think they’d be rather neat to do and see what we could each come up with… or maybe I should save those ideas for co-op days. 🙂 Even to making sample kites to fly over enemy territory…hmm.. the ideas are endless.
What do I think?
Some of the instructions could be a bit clearer and some items are used which aren’t as common today (for instance, I’ve never used rubber cement with my lad). I’ve not heard of excelsior… which when I google it is a woody twine all mixed together. Where to find I dunno. It does sound neat to play around with just to see what one could do with it. Most of the instructions are just enough while leaving the rest to common sense. Will it make the cut next spring? I dunno, we’ve done most of what we want to in it, so we may just need to pass it along to another family with a creative keener. 🙂 It’s a good book with oodles of images and ideas to go along with each art project.
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