Boxes; Children's literature; Handicraft; Paper work; Toys
You will need to have a large shop window in front. Make this first. Two
inches from the right-hand end of the box, mark with your pencil a wide
oblong space five inches by three. Cut out this window space on all four
sides. (For cutting a window space, see Diagram One, _A_, page 166.)
Cut a piece of waxed paper a little larger than the size of your window.
Paste this inside the box building over the window space to make glass.
Cut strips of pinwheel paper and paste them around the window on the
outside of the box to make window-casings.
Now you are ready to make a door for your store. Draw a door space on
your box with your pencil. Make it two inches from the left-hand end of
the box. Make it four inches high and two inches wide. (To cut single
door, see Diagram Two, _A_, page 167.) Cut across the top line, down the
side line that is next the window, and across the base. When you bend
the cardboard you have cut, you will have a door that will open and
close. Color the door, if you like. It may be painted brown.
After this, you are ready to place the roof on your store; but first,
lay one of the box covers upon its rims on your work-table and put the
little store upon it, well back, so there will be a porch in front.
Then, take your other shoe-box cover and fit it over the top of the box
building so that it projects over the porch in front. Two long pencils,
with ends run into the openings of two spools, make pillars to place at
either corner of the porch.
The step up to the porch is any small box you may have.
Inside the store, a long hat-pin box makes a counter. Flowers, leaves,
pretty pebbles, shells, and little toys such as you may find among your
own playthings may be displayed upon the counter.
A roly-poly tumble toy will make a clerk for the store, or, if you like,
you may find both clerk and customers in magazine pictures, and you can
mount them on thin cardboard and cut them out. There is no end to the
plays you can invent when your store is finished. Polly Ann of shoe-box
cottage, Boxville, has just come to the store to buy a loaf of bread.
There it is—that pretty brown pebble! Those green leaves are vegetables!
The beads in that box are apples! The shells are little cakes!
To Boxville! To Boxville! To have a lot of fun!
I’m going to the general store to buy a penny bun!
The bun is just a pebble on the counter of the store,
And the penny’s made of paper, so, perhaps, I’ll make some more!
[Illustration: The Village Store made of a shoe-box and two shoe-box
covers.]
[Illustration: Inside view of the Village Store. The counter is a
hat-pin box.]
[Illustration: The District School of Boxville. It is made from a
shoe-box.]
[Illustration: Inside view of the Boxville School. The desks are all cut
from small oblong boxes. The benches are boxes also; and the stove is a
spool with a pencil for a stovepipe.]
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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