brown, laced through with light blue ribbon, which is finished at each
corner with a loosely tied bow and ends. The _couvre-pied_, as the
name indicates, is meant to cover the feet of a person who lies on a
sofa, and is an excellent present to make to an elderly or invalid
friend.


TILE OR CHINA PAINTING.

Don't be frightened at the word, dears. China-painting is high art
sometimes, and intricate and difficult work often, but it is quite
possible to produce pretty effects without knowing a great deal about
either china or painting. Neither are the materials of necessity
expensive. All that you need, to begin with, are a few half tubes of
china or mineral paints, which cost about as much as oil colors,
four or five camel's-hair brushes, a palette-knife, a small phial of
oil-of-lavender, and another of oil-of-turpentine, a plain glazed
china cup or plate or tile to work on, and either a china palette or
another plate on which to rub the paints. For colors, black, capuchine
red, rose-pink, yellow, blue, green and brown are an ample assortment
for a novice and for purposes of practice. We would advise only two
tubes, one of black and one of rose pink, which are colors that do
not betray your confidence when it comes to baking. For the chief
difficulty in china-painting is that to be permanent the work must
be "fired,"--that is, fused by a great heat in a furnace,--and it
requires a great deal of experience to learn what the different
tints are likely to do under this test. Some colors--yellow, for
instance--eat up, so to speak, the colors laid over them. Others
change tint. Pinks and some of the greens grow more intense; white
cannot be trusted, and mixing one paint with another, as in oils, can