Nostalgic for crafts

More on the nostalgic front, because we are what we were as children, are we not?

I've been feeling crafty lately - actually, ever since I was pregnant, when I started making a collage alphabet frieze for my daughter's bedroom. Each letter is a 6" square.

My retired school-teacher-mum made me change A for alien and O for owl because those words start with the letter name, not the letter sound, if that means anything to you. Far be it from me to corrupt my daughter's early education with improper alphabet lessons, so I've now redone them as apple and octopus. (My mum rates those baby alphabet books by whether they include giraffe and icecream (baaaaad) or goat and igloo (good).)

We kids were very crafty - we drew fanatically, and loved making models and stuffed animals - whether from kits or found parts. We made doll house furniture out of card, and peg dolls with pipecleaner arms. We knitted and crocheted. We traced pictures from books and meticulously painted them, and cut them out to make stickers for our bedroom walls. My sister had a kit to make a 1:12 scale plastic Airfix model of none other than Henry VIII. 

Image of vintage 1970s kit found on eBay

All three of us girls were given for Christmas one year a plastic doll in a kit where you glued together (ewww) a felt historical outfit. My doll's outfit was lime green, which was apparently all the rage in the year seventeen-hundred-and-something. Speaking of felt, I've been making felt food for my daughter. So far I've made a chocolate cake (below), some fondant fancies, and a slice of Battenberg cake (delicious marzipan/cake treats from my childhood).