Webbcrafts

The Magic Tooth Saver

The shock of wobbly teeth

It can be a trying time for five or six year olds when they suddenly find that they have wobbling teeth. It happens just when they are experiencing the change from playing in nursery to being serious about learning, or perhaps even leaving their nursery and joining the big school.

Softening the blow

How can that blow be softened just a little? With stories of course, and there isn’t a  better story at this time than the Tooth Fairy whose promise is a coin or a gift.

Searching for the elusive tooth

Finding a milk tooth from underneath a pillow can be very difficult, especially if your child is lying right on it, and so a tooth saver is a pretty way of making life easier for yourself.

Crochet, beads and needle felting

Tooth Saver showing all pieces

I crocheted this one, and then stiffened it with beads and added a needle felted fairy as a handle. You do however, have to be ready with a story, especially if this is the first lost tooth.

Searching for stories

After searching the information on the origins of the Tooth Fairy myth, and finding that no-one is really sure how it came about, and knowing that I would surely need to explain to a very inquisitive little lady why she would benefit from putting  her tooth into the little nest for collection, I wrote this story:

The Best Tooth Fairy in the World

The Best Tooth Fairy in the World

Serafina is the world’s best tooth fairy, which means that she is allowed to collect the teeth from her favourite children. You Freya are honoured to be chosen by Serafina because you are a kind little girl who loves animals and flowers, especially toadstools, which as you know are where fairies make their homes.

Keeping the world safe

By giving Seraphina your tooth you are helping her to keep all the beautiful flowers safe from harm, and so make the world a wonderful place for all the children who are not quite as old as you. Children like younger sisters and brothers, who don’t yet understand how important it is that Seraphina is allowed to do her job properly, but they will when it’s their turn.

You see, your lost tooth holds magic.

It is the magic that holds everything together, it’s like a special kind of glue, that only little children can make. It is that special smile that lights up a dull world, it is your infectious laugh that makes all the old ones laugh too, it is your big hugs that bring such pleasure to everyone who cares for you, and it is your dreams that hold your future in your hands, and Seraphina collects it all from your tooth.

Making Seraphina happy

We all owe her our gratitude, and if we can hold her in our thoughts once in a while she will be happy too, because even fairies get old, and Seraphina is at least two hundred and ten. Now I know that this is hard to believe, but it is true, and she gets a little tired from flying such great distances every night.

A gift for every girl and boy

Because children never stop losing their teeth, and we are all so pleased with them for doing it that Seraphina leaves a little gift for each boy or girl that believes in her and leaves a tooth. Her gift also holds magic, and you can use the magic straight away.

Keeping your magic

You can take your coin and choose something from a shop that would please you, or put your present in your treasure box to keep and remember your first lost tooth, and know that you were especially chosen by the best tooth fairy, and send her your love.

Remembering why

As you lose more teeth you can put them in your pink tooth nest and wait for their collection, happy to know that all the effort of pulling your tooth that last little bit, which sometimes stings, will be all worthwhile.

The Pink Tooth Nest

Marking Your Page

A New Book

Today a beautiful new book arrived through the post. The smell of it’s pages inspired the need for a beautiful new bookmark to go with it. Bookmarks have a fascinating history and the making of one connects our thoughts to long gone crafters.

History of bookmarks

The first bookmarks were used throughout the medieval period, circa C5th to C15th century, consisting usually of a small parchment strip attached to the edge of folio (or a piece of cord attached to headband).

As the first printed books were quite rare and valuable, it was determined early on that something was needed to mark one’s place in a book without causing its pages any harm. Some of the earliest bookmarks were used at the end of the sixteenth century, and  Queen Elizabeth 1st was one of the first to own one.

Modern bookmarks are available in a huge variety of materials with a multitude of designs and styles from which to choose. Many are made of cardboard or heavy paper, but they are also constructed of leather, ribbon, fabric, felt, steel, wire, tin, beads, wood, plastic, vinyl, silver, gold and other precious metals, some decorated with gemstones.

The first detached, and therefore collectible, bookmarkers began to appear in the 1850s. One of the first references to these is found in Mary Russell Mitford’s Recollections of a Literary Life (1852):

“I had no marker and the richly bound volume closed as if instinctively.”

Note the abbreviation of ‘bookmarker’ to ‘marker’. The modern abbreviation is usually ‘bookmark’. Historical bookmarks can be very valuable, and are sometimes collected along with other paper ephemera.

Most nineteenth-century bookmarks were intended for use in bibles and prayer books and were made of ribbon, woven silk or leather.

I made a beaded one.

Beaded Bookmark

Materials:

Some Dos and Don’ts

• Don’t use silver beading wire…it breaks
• Don’t use cheap beads…the holes aren’t uniformly drilled
• Don’t use earing posts…they don’t bend well
• —————————————————————
• Do have a selection of needles ready
• Do use a bead spinner, it makes threading quicker…as long as you don’t use cheap beads
• Do use a good quality silver wire to make your ends…it doesn’t break

It’s up to you

You can make any pattern of beads, just using the beads that you have collected by keeping old jewellery, or buying from a charity shop. Your ends need to be finished attractively, but you can experiment with twisted wire and end beads to achieve the effect required.

It is helpful to have the small jewellery pliers, but if you haven’t got them then raid a tool box. The smallest pliers work well.

I had about three goes at this bookmark before I was satisfied…if at first you don’t succeed, try a different technique.

I'll Keep Your Place