Cardboard Play Day!

UPDATE!

PLAY DAY WILL BE POSTPONED UNTIL NOVEMBER DUE TO BUILDING REPAIR.

REVISED DATE TO FOLLOW>>>>>>>>>>>>

Cafe Slow: 〒185-0022 Tokyo, Kokubunji, 東元町２丁目２０

The cafe will be closed that day, so please bring your obento!

Cardboard Playground circa 1967

Big Play back top Rescan

LIFE Magazine - November 3, 1967 (Volume 63, Number 18) Page 3

LIFE Magazine - November 3, 1967 (Volume 63, Number 18) Page 2

LIFE Magazine - November 3, 1967 (Volume 63, Number 18) Page 1

LIFE Magazine - November 3, 1967 (Volume 63, Number 18) Modern Living -- The Big Play in Paper, from Giraffes to Gazebos

Wow, check out this 1967 LIFE magazine article entitled, "The Big Play in Paper", that was lovingly rescued and scanned by my friend Miss Meryl Ann Butler during a recent Spring cleaning.

Meryl Ann and I met while taking online classes from Diane Gilleland at Crafty Pod, (I learned almost everything I know about blogging from those classes) and I got to know Meryl Ann by her spit-your-tea-out-hilarious sense of humor and from the really helpful stuff she posted in the forums (she has a long and distinguished career in the craft industry.) She is the author of the book 90 Minute Quilts among, many others and she has an intensely joyful, vibrant style with a personality to match.

Meryl Ann recently sent me an email message explaining that:

"This clipping was in my "morgue file" which was a file we had in the olden days before electronic files… with clippings of images that might inspire future artwork. My file had thousands of clippings, and I just threw most of it away a couple of days ago - a hard thing to do, since I had collected images for a long time - well, at least from 1967, lol!  I only saved a couple of them, and of course the second I saw this I thought of you, Amber!"

How very thoughtful, and how entirely awesome. Enjoy a trip back to the glory days of cardboard......................we'll relive them again soon?

Cardboard Play Day at Musashino Place

A few photos from our first ever, open-to-the-Tokyo-public, cardboard pop-up play day.

We ran the event with just recycled cardboard, a few tools, bike power, and creative spirit.

Neighboring Ito Yokado kindly helped us bring many beautiful boxes over from their store (including the fantastic red stuff which was left over from New Year's postcard displays) and MakeDo pieces were lent to us by the American School of Japan.

We assembled these incredible Wind-balls prior to the play day, with Tanaka Satoshi's design plans that you can get here. Just plain fun. We've now got the smaller one up as a lampshade in the girls' room and it's gorgeous.

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The highlight of the day was seeing parents and children building together. Once my Japanese teacher helped me to write a sign in Japanese inviting everyone to play freely, they all started getting to it. Little houses, castles, tunnels, trains and forts....it's all poetry to me.

The same box on wheels that I made about 8 months ago (and flew back and forth from the US with) withstood countless laps on the concrete around the grass patch. I'm thinking we could do a great pop-up based on these alone....where to reclaim some old wheels????

Thanks to my friends from MIA, my husband (who even made dinner after we got home) and Chris B of a small lab for coming out, bearing the cold, taking pictures (many of which you see here) and wrangling cardboard with us at the end. A true labor of cardboard love! I really appreciate your support.

I'm looking forward to hosting more pop-ups and play days in 2013 so stay tuned for more info on where we'll be next...

....of course I hope you'll consider having a few cardboard pop-ups in your own home in the meantime?

A Spring Swing

We've been away to all sorts of places during Grandma's 3 week visit to Japan, and to be honest we haven't had a spare minute to catch our breath and let you know what we've been up to. No cardboard projects until today, but lots of time to dream after being reacquainted with all the beauty and ingenuity of Japan's temples, gardens, and urban streets.

And did I mention that spring is in the air? Literally. Our cherry blossoms are at their peak beauty and their petals are just beginning to fall... my VERY favorite time of the year.

I made this swing to take to our favorite playground that has only a climbing structure and no swings.

The swing is made of three very sturdy cardboard tubes that I measured to the desired length and then cut with a Japanese hand saw (nokogiri).  I used paper twine to weave around the tubes, which took about 10-15 minutes, and then threaded rope through the outer two tubes. My trusty bike straps make the swing adjustable and easy to put up and take down.

A fun swing that I can also easily carry with me to the park to hang on a low tree branch. All parts recyclable or reusable. I haven't tested to see how much the swing can hold, and Electra is not a candidate for doing so due to her featherweight status, but I'm quite sure it could hold most toddler's quite easily. Give it a try and let me know how strong yours is!