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Show Fun For Your Family By MISS ABBIE CONDIT National Recreation Association. Next time you unearth a collection of stubby little crayon ends, restrain your normal impulse to toss them into the wastebasket. They're still useful and certainly worthy of salvage. sal-vage. Seemingly useless wax crayons can be used as stain or paint for wood; they will also produce blended blend-ed marble paper or multicolored pictures on cloth. One of their main advantages is the ease with which they are used by young children. The would-be artists feel more at home with crayons than with paints, mainly because they don't spill or splash. Instead of buying a set of colored building blocks, for instance, you and your charges might make some. Lumber companies, especially sash and mill works, usually have piles of scrap ends from which you can salvage sal-vage nicely shaped blocks, gratis. Or they may amiably cut other scraps down to size for your collection. collec-tion. Sandpaper the rough ends of these blocks and then proceed to color them with crayons. Wood Stain. The effect of wood stain can be obtained by rubbing over crayon markings with light machine oil. Suppose you want to color each side of a block a different color a solid color with no detailed pattern. First step is to outline each edge with a straight line, then fill in the center areas with random crayon markings. mark-ings. These need not be too close together because the oil will later blend them into one another. Place a few drops of machine oil on an absorbent rag and rub over the crayoned surface until the stain covers the area. Use a different dif-ferent rag for each color. The wax of the crayon acts as a wood filler and gives a smooth, glossy finish if rubbed with a wool cloth. Other toys can be colored by young children in this same way. Paint-Pot Artistry. Since crayons are soluble in kerosene kero-sene or turpentine, you can use them to make your own liquid paints for coloring toys and blocks. It will save you hours of diligent searching through stores, too, now that paints are increasingly difficult to get. Pour a small quantity of kerosene or turpentine into a paint dish and shave the crayons into the solution. Experiment with a mixture of two or three colors if you're sure they won't clash. To apply the resultant paint, rub it into the sanded wood surface with a soft piece of cloth. Released by Western Newspaper Union. |