Strange craft kits from the 70s

[Throughhistory]

Anyone else remember them?

Plasticraft - I mean who doesn't want to make a penny embedded in a plastic blob?

Enamelcraft - at least that resulted in a few hardly wearable items of jewellery

A board covered in black velvet. You banged small nails in, then wound gold thread from one nail to another to create the illusion of curves in a picture, often a boat. Yes really.

Did I miss out on any gems?

I had a couple of kits to make things from matches. Came with a huge bag of matchsticks (without heads obvs!) and a card template that you had to glue the matches on to make a house/church/boat etc. There was also a cutting tool to cut the wood into different lengths. I think it captured my attention for about 10 minutes!

Letraset sold sheets of transfer letters in all sorts of fancy fonts.

They were probably for an early version of desktop publishing, but I was mad for them - another thing I spent my pocket money on for some reason.

@Londonmummy66

THe colour and cut out historical ladies you could buy for pennies in every national trust gift shop. An A3 sheet with a lady in historical underwear and several dresses you could hang off her with little tabs. Never see them now but I so loved them and had loads.

I have hazy memories of those.

@LunaNorth

I had a Japanese garden set, that you just sprinkled with water. The whole thing sprouted some weird powdery substance to create a lovely cherry blossom tree, grass, flowers, etc.

Sadly the joy was short-lived as my mother accidentally sucked all the powdery stuff up the hoover.

I imagine it was for the best, it was probably asbestos or something.

The asbestos bit did it for me

You lot with your fancy knitting nancies! We had a cotton reel with four nails tacked into it!

Used to make yards and yards of french knitting from all the oddments of wool left over from our jumpers and knitted school cardigans. Then we’d tack them together in a giant spiral and use them as floor rugs.

This thread has brought back so many memories!

I had this book. Everyone got knitted egg cosies for Christmas! I knitted my dad a tie which he refused to wear. Can't think why!

hearmesnore

"Did anyone else have a "Touch Tapestry" kit? No actual sewing involved. It was just a sheet of polystyrene with a printed design on it, and a special tool to press coloured yarn into it to make "stitches". I had two - a horse and a dog. Never finished either - they were extremely tedious."

You are very wrong. I came across my Touch Tapestry horse (or at least, head!) in the loft a couple of weeks ago.

All completed.😂

I had a Scraperfoil kit in copper - I remember painstakingly doing a tiger, which I then gave to my grandparents - they framed it and it stayed on their living room wall for the rest of their lives.

Not a kit, but I used to love making peg dolls - I got my mum to buy a batch of old-fashioned wooden clothes pegs for the purpose. I had a book called 'The Kings and Queens of England' and I tried to make peg dolls of all the queens using whatever scraps of fabric (usually polyester or crimplene in garish colours) that I could lay my hands on. Lack of appropriate fabric meant some were more convincing than others!

We used to wear our French knitting as scarves. With the bobbin (cotton reel in my case!) still attached so they were always works in progress.

[quote PeckyOwl]@EventuallyDeleted the drawing enlarger was, I think called a pantograph. I can't believe how much of this stuff I had. Has anyone ever found a use for french knitting??[/quote]

Sketch-o-graph! I had completely forgotten about this, but a memory came back- my DB and I got one each one Xmas, but I recall the boxes they came in were a bit battered.

Ah yes, Sketch a Graph. It was very fiddly holding it and both pieces of paper in place.

I had a drawing enlarger. I spent ages drawing a small picture that I was pleased with and then used the enlarger to draw a bigger one. Unfortunately I failed to consider that it would enlarge all the dodgy, wobbly bits in my original 'masterpiece'!

I had one of the French knitting plastic dolls mentioned upthread. I used the resulting woollen tube as a somewhat bulky scarf for my Sindy.

I was born in 1969 and don't recognise many of the things people have mentioned except spirograph. I excitedly used a friend's spirograph, showed my dad the results and he said it was uncreative and I should do my own pictures. so I assume from that my parents wouldn't have got me kits.

At primary school we did binca sewing, knitting and basket making. I do a lot of art and crafts as an adult.

I excitedly used a friend's spirograph, showed my dad the results and he said it was uncreative and I should do my own pictures.

That was my dad's opinion, too. But as far as I am aware, that was the only toy of this sort that he objected to, because we had many others. Maybe I just got him on a bad day, because there's masses of opportunity for creativity in Spirograph.

I remember a weaving kit where you had an oval shape with wholes round the outside , stuck sticks in it and weaved rafia round to make a pot or basket

In the days before photocopiers, before even mimeographs, we often used pantographs at school to copy what would now be simple handouts.

None of my friends had a proper one at home, though. My mum used to make the most amazing wall art, window decorations and scenery. She would design on ordinary size paper and then scale up using a combination of pantograph and grids.

I remember a kit consisting of a plastic board with small spikes on it and tiny beads - about 4mm by 2mm with a hole in them that you put over the spikes to make a design or picture. I can't remember what it was called. You pulled the beads off with tweezers to make a new picture.

Ah the Sketch a Graph. One year I asked for a Spirograph for Christmas, imagine my disappointment when I opened a Sketch a Graph instead, which was fairly useless. I came on to say Remus Kits. I absolutely loved them. My favourite was a post office, which came with a cardboard ‘counter’, paper money, etc. Even some cardboard glasses!

@bruffin

I remember a weaving kit where you had an oval shape with wholes round the outside , stuck sticks in it and weaved rafia round to make a pot or basket

Yup, I mentioned this near the start of this glorious thread! Flower shape, heart maybe as well...

I had a device on the Spirograph principle, but it was a rotating disc in a box with a hole in it - you slotted a stencil shape into the hole, drew round the stencil, turned the disc a notch and then drew another stencil. At the end you had a round Spirograph-esque picture. One of those things I thought marvellous for about a week and then got bored with.

@OliveHenry

The spacehopper floor lamp - I would still love one of these!

That was the stuff of dreams. I still have my mum's set of magazines. I recall making liquorice allsorts cushions from our old terry nappies

I had a thing where there was a black plastic board with holes in it and you put translucent plastic pegs in it to make a picture then put a light behind it so that the picture lit up.
I am convinced it was called Bright Lights but when I Google I find something similar called Lite Brite so either I am wrong or I had a knock off version 😂

OMG, this thread is my whole childhood

I think I or my best friend had all these kits. My mum loved art and craft so was happy to buy them. There was nothing else to back in the day anyway

I had Lite Brite, and that's definitely what mine was called. We were finding the plastic pegs for years afterwards!

I always wished I could get more of the black paper patterns to make real designs, or at least black paper to make my own, but I had to use brown paper grocery bags, which never looked as good, as black paper was too expensive/difficult to get on its own not in a pack of other colours.

I loved Spirograph too, but it belonged to my sister, so I only got to use it when she decided. I bought a knock-off one years later in the Works or somewhere like that, but it's nowhere near as good as the real one was

Plasticraft, ah yes! I suspect I still have some of my baby teeth encased in some of that stuff tucked away in a box of random childhood crap. "We" discovered that you really shouldn't pour lots of the chemical into a thin plastic mould (the whole thing melted and poured down the side of a chest of drawers, trashing the carpet).

DId anybody have a kit called "Replica"? You mixed a powder to make a mould (in our case, usually people's fingers) and then poured in plaster of paris (I presume) to get the "replica".

I didn't really get the hang of Artstraws; everything turned out a bit wonky.

I suspect DM was delighted when I moved on to making plant holders and hanging decorations out of macramé.