EASTER NOVELTIES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume X, Issue 13, 1 April 1893, Page 309

EASTER NOVELTIES.

Easter time is coming, and I will give to all our readers a beautiful illustration for a home-made Easter cross. The natural Easter cross is in imitation of rough granite. The cross should, if possible, he quite large, from eighteen to twenty one inches high. Fasten it to a solid block of wood ; then arrange stones around it, in imitation of a natural wayside cross. The wood is then painte’d with three coats of granite-coloured paint, varnished and heavily sanded, and cut in imitation of irregular stones. The stones around the base are dipped in melted wax of the

same colour as the cross. The next step is to form the ice and snow. Take a quantity of pure wax, and melt it to the consistency of thick cream ; then, with a small ladle, take up some of the wax, and proceed to imitate the ice, which has frozen upon the cross, and dripped down in long pendent icicles. This is done by pouring the wax over the arms and allowing it to drip slowly, one coat upon another, until the proper length and thickness are given to each icicle.

The wax must not become too cool, or it will form into lumps, though in some places the rippled appearance natural to ice looks well. A portion is also poured upon the top, and a little upon the stones. When cold, the wax portion is varnished with a very thin coat of dammar, and, before this is dry, is thickly sprinkled with diamond powder The flowers suitable for this cross are two clumps of violets, a few snowdrops ; and the ever lovely trailing arbutus, with its gorgeous leaves and delicate blossoms, forms the chief adornment, and is at ranged to cluster thickly around the base, peeping out from the snow and ice about the stones, and fastened up around the body with long spravs, falling over the arms in long, graceful garlands. All these flowers should be made from wax, and if rightly made are beautiful. Anon,