Los Angeles Public Library—My Search for Vintage Craft Books

     I’m always searching the streets of Downtown Los Angeles to find the most unique craft and fabric stores; and one day I had a thought—I wonder what kind of craft books and crafting ideas can I find at my local library? Being that The Central Library, located in the heart of Downtown L.A., is one of the largest publicly funded libraries in the world—there must be books older than I am about crafts or paper crafting; and it turns out I was right. After asking the clerk at the information desk for directions to the craft section I finally made it to the isles upon isles of books on the topic; and I anxiously began to pull book after book until I had a pile so high I could barely even see ahead of me. The first book I opened was one titled, ‘New Dimensions in Paper Craft’, by Sadami Yamada, published in 1966. As I was flipping through the black and white pages I began to realize that many of the paper crafting decorations I found in this vintage craft book were much like the party decorations that are in style right now. For instance, I found what looked to me like the beginnings of the pom-pom—made of tissue; and a template for an Easter tissue paper party decoration. There were so many wonderful ideas, and I thought to myself, “Why didn’t I come here sooner?”

I took pictures of some illustrations and templates from the book to share with you, but now I’m wondering if there might be some kind of copy write issue so I’ll just demonstrate some of the cute ideas I found in that book.

Here is the Easter tissue paper decoration template provided by, ‘New Dimensions in Paper Craft’, and shared by me.

Here is the result:

And here is another cute idea I found that was so simple yet so fun!

Thank you for stopping by to share in this adventure with me. I urge you to stop at your local library to search for craft books that our ancestors left for us. To reinvent their ideas or to simply bring them back to life.