Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/147

 Popular Science Monthly

��a paste form with turpentine, working it as smooth as butter. When ready to use, thin out with more turpentine and add a little boiled linseed oil, which is to keep the paint from 'drying on the board. Do not make the printing color too thin; use plenty of it so that the sunken parts will be filled level-full. Then with the scraper spread the paint out evenly, pushing the tool forward, using both hands to press it down hard. This will leave the sunken parts full and the high parts smooth.

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An Improvised Stage for an Out of Doors Fairy Play

AUTOMOBILES, four on the right and . two on the left, furnished most of the light for a fairy play, "The Merman's Pipe," produced under the direction of Mrs. A. J. Commons, at Merrill Springs, Wisconsin, for the benefit of a rural school social center five miles away from any stage machinery or electric lights. Each car was so turned as to throw the rays of the

���The brilliant rays from the headlights of six automobiles and a number of lanterns furnished the spotlights and footlights for a fairy play given at night in a far-from-the-city locality

��With everything ready and the impres- sion-board filled with color, take the roller in both hands and select a point on the roller-surface at which to start. Place this part down on the board, and with a firm, even pressure roll it along over the surface until one complete revolution is made. Be careful to stop when the starting point of the roller is reached. This is to avoid making a lap. Carefully pick up the roller, not permitting it to slip on the board, and place it down on the surface to be grained.

The first impressions from a new board are seldom good and for this reason it is better to make several on some other surface until the board gets into proper shape. When you have finished with the board and roller clean them off with benzine and a stiff brush.

��lamps on some important scene. In that way they provided six areas of spotlight.

For footlights the farmers brought their lanterns. The producer arranged these along the inside of a screen made out of the finest poultry wire interwoven with leafy branches. Sheets of tin reflected the light upon the stage. One scene in the foreground demanded stronger illumina- tion. There a large carriage lamp was used instead of a lantern.

The lake shore was the background; but that was not essential, for the play was repeated later where there was no lake. A green curtain hung on wires, with brush, leaves, and rushes fastened to it, gave a dense leafy drop that helped out wherever Nature failed to provide the proper screens of foliage. -

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