Tag Archives: toys

Useful Sites

Friday Bucket of Links

Happy Friday everyone! Here are some links to help you avoid doing any work today:

  • The Costumer’s Manifesto has a non-toxic crafts cookbook with less toxic solutions to a lot of craft supplies, many of which are used in props shops.
  • Thanks to Desiree Maurer for the Tick Tock Toys archive of food packaging, store displays, et al.
  • Check out the Strong National Museum of Play’s online collections for tons of pictures of toys and games. Their organization also runs the National Toy Hall of Fame.
  • A different and interesting site is Make & Meaning. Rather than focusing on how to make things, this site explores what “making things” means, and how it affects our lives.
  • The Household Cyclopedia is a reprint of an 1881 book which contained how-to information on all sorts of household tasks. Back then, of course, “household tasks” included farming, making your own paint, and casting metal. It’s useful for both learning how to do these various tasks, and also as a historical perspective to aid in period research for the late nineteenth century.
How-to

How to make a wooden ratchet

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I published my first Instructable. It’s for a wooden ratchet noise maker I made for the upcoming production of Twelfth Night at the Public Theatre’s “Shakespeare in the Park.”

Here is the research image I was given to work from. The tutorial follows below. Don’t worry, it’s not a movie; sound isn’t going to start blaring if you push “play”.


Wooden Ratchet Noise Maker – More DIY How To Projects

Instructables just began allowing you to embed your projects in other websites. You can look at the whole thing above. Personally, I think it looks weird, but you can follow the link to the actual page for the best experience. Once there, you can also download the whole thing as a PDF.

If you’ve never been to Instructables before, now’s a great time to check it out. If you’ve never made an Instructable before, I highly recommend it; it’s such a great and intuitive way to share tutorials. Finally, if you’ve made an Instructable you think would be of interest to props people, let me know and I’ll share it on this blog.