Hobby Album

If you or a family member has a hobby like car racing, bicycling, rodeo, fishing, hunting, etc. you might find you have more photos than you want to put in your regular family albums. A special hobby album is a good solution. My daughter is making a hunting album for her husband. She is not opposed to hunting but she didn't really want numerous photos of dead animals and unshaven men in grimy clothes mixed in among photos of family birthdays, Christmas, etc.

Collector's Album

A collector's album can document a special or valuable collection. It can also be used to help control clutter. If your whole family collects things of questionable value it may help them get rid of things if they have a special album to put photos of the items. It might be much easier for them to let go of things they are no longer really interested in if they at least have a photo to remember them by. It will be much easier to store one photos album than various boxes of shells, stuffed animals, Barbie dolls, rocks, etc. If the hobby has some items that are flat or small you could include a few of them along with the photos. Be sure to include the child in some of the photos of the collection objects.

Arts and Crafts

Page Toppers

Quotes

• Actually, my artistic knowledge is so tiny it could fit into the brain of an art critic. (Michael Kilian)
• The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. (Aristotle)
• Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. (Thomas Merton)
• Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better. (André Gide)
• Art is a lie that lets us see the truth. (Pablo Picasso)
• Art is like a flower, it blooms with creativity.
• Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. (Twayla Tharp)
• The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist.
• An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world. (George Santayana)
• The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work. (Emile Zola)
• An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it. (Paul Valery)
• Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid. (Jules Feiffer)
• Ceramists get all fired up!
• Crafts fill my days - not to mention the living room, bedroom and closets.
• Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. (Scott Adams)
• Creativity takes courage! (Henry Matisse)
• Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. (Henry Ward Beecher)
• Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. (Pablo Picasso)
• Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads. (Erica Jong)
• The greatest thing about being an artist is that no one can tell you you're not.
• The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public. (Paul Gauguin)
• If I paint fast enough....does it count as aerobic exercise.
• If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint," then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced. (Vincent Van Gogh)
• Just because no one understands you it doesn't mean your an artist.
• Leisure, some degree of it, is necessary to the health of every man's spirit. (Harriet Martineau)
• Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. (Stella Adler)
• Magicians are a vanishing species.
• My friend really likes to make pottery, but to me it's just kiln time.
• My husband let's me have all the craft supplies I can hide.
• Old Crafter's never die, they just get more bazaar!
• Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do. (Edgar Degas)
• One person's junk is another person's treasures.
• The purpose of art is to stop time. (Bob Dylan)
• The reluctance to put away childish things may be a requirement of genius. (Rebecca P. Sinkler)
• Science is everything we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else. (David Knuth)
• There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."
• There's nothing more exciting than starting a new project.
• When a habit begins to cost money, it's called a hobby.
• When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art. (Paul Cezanne)
• When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college - that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared at me, incredulous, and said, "You mean they forget?" (Howard Ikemoto)
• Why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle?
• Without art, the crudeness of reality would make life unbearable.

Art Album

You might want to use a Big Book for this or you can make reduced color copies or take photos of the larger items rather than use the original. It is nice to take a photo of the child with some of his current artwork.

What is Red?

(Mary O'Neill)

Put Something In

Draw a crazy picture,
Write a nutty poem,
Sing a mumble-gumble song,
Whistle through your comb.
Do a looney-gooney dance
'Cross the kitchen floor,
Put something silly in the world
That ain't been there before.

(by Shel Silverstein - who is greatly missed by so many)

Puzzles and Puzzle Pages

Page Toppers

• An optimist is a man who starts a crossword puzzle with a pen.
• The best place to use big words is in a crossword puzzle. (Brian Koslow)
• Bits and Pieces
• Don't Bother Me...Or I'll Have Cross Words For You!
• Pieces of the Puzzle Put Together Make The Picture Whole
• Puzzle place
• Without You My Life Would be Incomplete
• You are the missing piece of the puzzle of my life
• You Are the Puzzle Part that Completes My Life
• You Complete Me

Puzzle Poem

When it's boring
Because of rainy weather
Nothing's so fun as
Putting a puzzle together.

 ________________________________________________________________
|       (_      (_      (_      (_      (_      (_      (_      (_
|        _)      _)      _)      _)      _)      _)      _)      _)
|  _   _(  _   _(  _   _(  _   _(  _   _(  _   _(  _   _(  _   _(
|_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |
|      _)      _)      _)      _)      _)      _)      _)      _)
|     (_      (_      (_      (_      (_      (_      (_      (_
|_______)_______)_______)_______)_______)_______)_______)_______)
         Normand  Veilleux

Cutting Tips for Puzzle Pages

When doing puzzle pages, where you are cutting out a die-cut or template shape out of pictures. Tape all pictures together on the back at the sides and corners where they meet. Then turn over all the pictures (all taped together), make sure they are all right side up of course, and then just trace the shape you want. Works great if you want to use the circle cutter too. I've done tons of pages this way. I also did 6 pictures (2 across, 3 down) and used the wavy ruler down the center. One page I separated and put PMP between and journaled on it. The other I just separated slightly like in the puzzles in the Crop Talk. Great for landscape pictures that I really didn't want to crop. (cut the pictures apart right through the splits and just peal off the parts and pieces of splits, separate slightly when you put them on the page)

Puzzle Page Using a Central Die-cut

(These instructions are for a 12 x 12 page)

1. Choose your photos; 6 horizontal photographs work well and a 12 x 12 page.
2. Choose a central die cut (or use another photo, cut into a decorative shape with a template). Large, simple die cuts will be easiest to work with; good ones are the airplane, anchor, angel, bow, cathedral window, Christmas tree, dump truck, fish, heart, school bus, trophy, umbrella and wedding cake.
3. Crop your photos to fill the page, allowing for about a 1/8" gap between photos. For 6 photos on a 12 x 12 page, crop to 5 1/2" x 3 3/4".
4. Arrange your photos on the page, but do not adhere.
5. Place the die cut over the photos in desired position and CAREFULLY trace around it with a sharp pencil, making "score" markings on the photos.
6. Cut the photos about 1/8" outside the score line. You will discard the piece with the score line on it.
7. Reassemble the pieces on the page, testing for fit. Trim pieces if necessary.
8. Carefully adhere photos and die cut to the page.
9. The die cut makes a good space for some quick, short journaling.
10. I recommend a page protector be used on this puzzle page to protect the small pointed photo and die cut areas from being lifted up.

You can make a puzzle page in several ways. Use large pieces from kids puzzles to cut photos and paper for journaling on, use one of the templates available, cut a large shape to fit on the page and cut photos to fit inside the shape, etc.

Crossword Puzzle Page

Make the whole page look like a giant crossword puzzle. The one I saw was 10 squares across and 11 squares down drawn with a black pen. The black squares were paper. The black squares were on: Row 1 #4; R 2 - #3,9; R3 - #3,10; R4 - #2, 10; R5 - # 3, 4, 5, 7; R6 - # 5, 8; R7 - #1, 9, 10; R8 - #2, 6; R9 - #3; R10 - #8 and R 11 - #5, 10.
Starting on the 6th square of the first row the word "Friends" was written down. On the 4th row the word forever was written between the 2 black squares so that it intersected with the 'e' in the word "friends". Here is a sketch to give you a better idea. (Polly G.)
You could use other titles. You could put the photos of friends or small wallet size photos exchanged by many students in the small white squares or those with dark backgrounds in place of the black squares. You could make the squares bigger and have less squares.