[Illustration:  WOODEN BOX, ORNAMENTED WITH FERNS (AUTUMN-LEAF WORK).]

The method of preparing the colors is to squeeze a very little paint from each tube upon your palette or plate; take a tiny drop of oil-of-lavender on the palette-knife, and with it rub the paint smooth.  It should be thinned just enough to work smoothly; every drop of oil added after that is a disadvantage.  Use a separate brush for each color, and wash them thoroughly with soap and hot water before putting them aside.  The painting should be set away where no dust can come to it, and it will dry rapidly in forty-eight hours or less.  Elaborate work often requires repainting after baking, the process being repeated several times; but for simpler designs one baking is usually enough.  There are bakeries in Boston, New York, and others of our large cities, to which china can be sent, the price of baking being about ten cents for each article.

[Illustration:  TABLE-TOP (NOVELTIES IN FERN-WORK)]

OTHER MODES OF DECORATING CHINA.

The picture-books which are to be found at the Japanese stores nowadays suggest numberless excellent designs for china decorating.  So do the “Walter Crane Fairy-tales.”  A plain olive or cream-colored tile with a pattern in bamboo-boughs and little birds, a milk-jug in gray with leaves and a motto in black, a set of tiny butter-plates with initials and a flower-spray on each, are easy things to attempt and very effective when done.  Pie-dishes can be ornamented with a long, sketchy branch of blossoms or a flight of swallows across the bottom, and we have seen those small dishes of Nancy ware, in which eggs are first poached and then served on table, made very pretty by a painting on each of a chicken, done in soft browns and reds, with a little line to frame it in and run down along the handle.  What we have mentioned here are only suggestions; a little patience and practice will soon help you to other patterns of your own, and we can’t help hoping that some of you will be tempted to try your hands at this delightful art.

DRAWING AND PAINTING ON WOOD.

Articles in plain white wood can be bought almost anywhere nowadays.  Pen-trays, letter-racks, easels, paper-knives, photograph-frames, watch-cases, needle-books, portfolios, glove-boxes, fans, silk-winders—­there is no end to the variety which can be had, and had at a very moderate price.  Now, any girl or boy among you with a paint-box and a little taste for drawing, can make a really pretty gift by decorating some one of these wooden things, either in color or with pen drawings in brown or black.  The pattern need by no means be elaborate.  A wreath of ivy simply out-lined in sepia or india-ink, or a group of figures sketched with the same, produces a very pleasing and harmonious effect.  “Prout’s Brown,” a sort of fluent ink of a burnt-umber