A Rustic Vase
June 30th, 2007 by admin
CRAFTS
It is very easy to get the material out of which this vase is made. You need only go to your wood-pile, or, if you have none, to the wood-pile of a neighbor.
Choose a round stick four inches in diameter and eight or ten inches long, with a smooth bark. If you find the stick, and it is too long, you can easily saw off an end.
Now comes the difficult part of the work: The inside of the stick must be scooped out to within four inches of the bottom. The easiest way of accomplishing this will be to send it to a turning-mill if there is one at hand; if not, patience and a jack-knife will in the end prevail.
Next, with a little oil-color, paint a pretty design on the bark, if you can,—trailing-arbutus, partridge berry, sprays of linnea,—any wood thing which can be supposed to cluster naturally round a stump.
Set the stump in a flower-pot saucer, filled with earth, and planted with mosses and tiny ferns; fit a footless wine or champagne glass, or a plain cup, into the hollow end, and, with a bunch of grasses and wild flowers, or autumn leaves, you have a really exquisite vase, prettier than any formal article bought in a shop, and costing little more than time and patience, with a touch of that rare thing—taste! which, after all, is not so very rare as some people imagine.
Any friend will prize such a vase of your own making.
St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5,
Nov 1877-Nov 1878; No 1, Nov 1877
(Now in the Public Domain: not copyrighted in the United States)