Book Review: The Craftster Guide to Nifty, Thrifty, and Kitschy Crafts
Fifty Fabulous Projects from the Fifties and Sixties
Tanya A. Brown

In my grandmother's later years, quilting and tatting became too hard on her arthritic hands and aged eyes. Intricate handwork gave way to simpler projects that could be done with crochet hooks and bright yarns.

Dozens of blinding tam-o'-shanters and potholders featuring disembodied doll's heads were the result. I treasure the ones left to me, but my spine tingled when I saw the crochet-embellished plastic face staring blankly out of the cover of Leah Kramer's book, "The Craftster Guide to Nifty, Thrifty and Kitschy Crafts." My grandmother, it seems, was not alone in her affection for this particular project.

The result of an ongoing love affair with vintage arts and crafts books, Kramer's book is brimming with deliciously awful projects from the past plus a few demented creations all of her own. "I'm always thrilled when I encounter arts and crafts books from the 1950s and 1960s," Kramer writes, "The idea for this book came when my bookshelves started to sag under the weight of my collection. I'm fond of projects that make clever use of throwaways, as many old projects do. I enjoy the thriftiness and the extra ingenuity involved. But best of all, the crafts of that era are unmistakably retro and often hysterically kitschy - not on purpose!"

The motto of another of Kramer's creations, Craftster.org, is "No tea cozies without irony". That motto is especially appropriate in the context of these crafts, which are the product of a society entirely devoid of irony. It's easy now, from the distance of forty or fifty years, to see how truly awful and hilarious some of these projects really are - crocheted poodle toilet paper covers and popsicle stick handbags, to name two. Yet at the time, they were executed with seriousness, products of people who were trying to "make do" with materials they had on hand.

I distinctly remember the teachers at my rural elementary school admiring a wastebasket one of them had made, a flimsy affair constructed from pastel foam egg cartons tied together with yarn. It looked exactly like what it was, a bunch of dented old egg cartons, and its ability to hold trash seemed highly theoretical even to the eyes of a second grader. "Oooh, maybe the children in my class will bring in cartons so I can make one," one of the teachers sighed with genuine yearning.

That credulousness and lack of irony is behind much vintage kitsch crafting. The thought that egg cartons were not an attractive decorative element never occurred to those ladies, just as many thousands more never questioned the elegance of pipe cleaners or bracelets made from castoff toothbrushes. They had a palpable need to decorate and create, but few materials and perhaps little artistic talent. The crafts in Kramer's book are the result.

Kramer wades through this morass of tastelessness with affection and humor, interspersing favorite vintage crafts with a selection of her own creations. Directions are updated throughout to include current materials and safety guidelines without belaboring the point. For example, when discussing E6000, a potent glue, she mentions that it isn't good for us then trusts that we'll have the sense to read the cautions on the glue's packaging.

The book is divided into sections on accessories, home, clothing, novelties and holidays, and in the tradition of vintage crafts none of the projects look difficult to complete. For example, the "Slip-on Toothbrush Bracelet" is made by pulling out the bristles, softening the brush in boiling water, then bending it into the right shape and gluing on some macaroni letters. Why not make an armload of these beauties?

Then there's the doll cake whose recipe Kramer unearthed. There was a time when no little girl's birthday was complete without a cheap, blindly staring doll impaling a skirt-shaped, profusely frosted cake. After the party, there was the lovely horror of pulling the doll out and finding out that it had no legs. This in turn led to hours of fun and imaginative play, not to mention future psychotherapy visits. (This is how "Thalidomide doll" became one of my favorite childhood games.)

Although the book doesn't include the egg carton wastebasket of my memories, it does have an amazing lampshade made from derelict cartons. Their embellishments make them resemble a squadron of perky foam breasts, which is sure to lend a certain panache to any decorating scheme. Insert a high-wattage bulb and - voila! - you're ready for a visit from the local fire department!

Any craft concocted by the marketing department of a product manufacturer is sure to be especially fine, and Kramer's selections don't disappoint. Courtesy of the Alcoa company, we have animals and space helmets which require untold rolls of aluminum foil. One can almost hear the marketing executives chanting "More foil! We need crafts that use more foil!" The towel industry is represented by a bath towel tied at its four corners, an assemblage which masquerades as a purse - truly, a craft anyone can do!

The titles of the books Kramer have excerpted from are good for a giggle as well. How could you fail to like any project from a book called "Fun with Plastic Bottles"? The representative of that book, a pig fashioned from an empty bleach bottle, serves as confirmation that yes, good times can indeed be had with plastic bottles.

If I have a quibble with The Craftster Guide, and it's a relatively minor one, it's that a quarter of the projects are "retro-inspired", not actual vintage projects. Surely, with bookshelves that "sag under the weight of (her) collection" of vintage craft books the author could have found just ten more genuine projects awful enough to merit inclusion in this book.

On the other hand, perhaps some of these crafts are things that Kramer remembers seeing but was unable to find in her collection. The "Crocheted Doll Face Fridgies," for example, are very similar to the real deal, my grandmother's ghastly doll-headed potholder hangers.

Whether genuinely weird or a modern re-creation, the projects in this book are worth at least a giggle and maybe a few minutes of time to try. I just hope my future grandkids like aprons made out of neckties.

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