ejmiddleton's review
4.0
I want to check this out again when the kids are older - there's a lot of really neat ideas (I can only imagine how much H would love the Painter Quiver) and the instructions/supply list are really clear.
toad_maiden's review
3.0
The crafts in here ranged from really cool (natural fabric dyeing! nature chess set!) to truly stupid and even appropriative ("African design"? totem poles?!). It's worth a gander if you've got sciencey or crafty kids, but it's not the best book of its type.
coldinaugust's review
2.0
Vectors wildly between "Hey, this is pretty cool! I wish I'd learned about this when I was a kid" and "Man, some of these are really shitty". Stuff on the cool side include art skills of making your own clay, both from clay soil and a salt dough clay recipe; dyeing fabric using flowers, leaves, and even a mordant (setting agent) recipe; a chess set with land (twig, bark, etc) pieces and sea (shell, driftwood, etc.) pieces; hammering flowers/leaves onto paper or fabric. I think the fairy houses, furniture, and dolls would also be fun to make if I were/had a kid. Other projects were appropriative and/or dumb: make a totem pole or an "amulet" bag or an "African" design (there's a lot of designs to choose from there, because it's an ENTIRE CONTINENT) or a project that literally involves just hot gluing moss & shit to an already-made basket. And who doesn't want a necklace made of cantaloupe seeds? Read for the "Art Skills" section and skim the rest.
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