Cut, Color and Paste Paper Doll Furniture

Monday, February 19, 2018

Cut, Color and Paste Paper Doll Furniture

Paper dolls are sold in every toy-store ; the dresses and furniture being printed on thick paper, which will bear a good deal of handling, ready for cutting out. In the country, where it may not be easy to buy them ready-made, a doll can be cut from the fashion-plate of a magazine, and a pattern made, from which the dresses and hats may be cut. If you have only plain white paper, it can be colored from the paints in your color-box ; and it is really more interesting to plan a doll's wardrobe in this way than to have it all ready-made.

Diagrams for bed, chair, table, and sofa, are given below; and the furniture can be cut from bristol-board, and colored, or from thin, smooth cardboard.
In cutting out this furniture, patterns of it may first be taken by laying a piece of thin paper over each diagram, and carefully copying every line. These can be laid on the cardboard, and a pencil-line drawn around them. There are three sorts of lines, each one meaning different treatment, as you will see in the description of how to cut out the rocking-chair. If you have only white cardboard to use, you will have to paint your furniture, - either dark-brown, like walnut; or in colors, like the enameled sets.

First of all, cut round the outside of the rocking-chair ; and, if you begin by cutting off the greater part of the waste cardboard, you can turn your scissors more easily. Now lay it down; take a flat ruler, or something with a straight edge, and mark over all the parts which are to be turned down with the point of your scissors, or with a penknife, but not deep enough to cut through: these parts are indicated in little dots; thus, (as seen in the lines from A to A). Now the lines marked thus are to be marked in the same manner; but, as those parts are to be turned up you must mark them on the reverse side. As there are no lines on that side, make a little hole with the point of a pin at the extreme end of these lines (B and B), to show you where to draw your knife when the rocking-chair is turned over. Next you must cut through the lines marked thus (as seen in lines from C to C): now bend the parts up or down, as the lines direct. You will find, when you have cut out and bent your furniture as directed, little tabs, that are to go underneath, to gum or sew the other parts too.