Scrapbook Your Hobbies

There’s a quote by Dave Barry that reads: There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness." Though I can understand his analogy, I believe having a hobby can help us all through stressful times and perhaps prevent that dreaded “mental illness.” On the other hand, we all know how our passion for scrapbooking can evolve into an obsession for crops, supplies, idea books, and even new subject matter to add to our albums.

Throughout my life I’ve had some hobbies that have been around almost as long as I have and some that seemed to fade away quietly to make room for the next pastime that caught my eye. Most of my hobbies are of a creative nature so it seemed to be a perfect idea to document them with my current hobby of scrapbooking.

Before starting the creative work I decided how I was going to approach this project. Some questions to think about are:

• How many hobbies do I want to document?


• Will each need its own page or are there some I can lump together for a single layout?


• Do I need a special album to store these memories or will they be a comfortable addition to an album already in progress?


• If I want to start a new album, what size will it need to be?


• Can I use an album with a set number of pages or do I need to be able to add to it in the future?

I decided that I could add the layouts to my “ME” book. There are already a few layouts in there about some of my hobbies; reading and music are just a couple that I’ve already completed. In time I might have to do some rearranging because this album is filling up quickly. At that time I may decide to move them to their own album but for now, it’s the perfect home for these pages.

Each hobby will have its own layout. I decided to begin with my oldest hobby and my newest for now. I wanted to include things that are actually products of my hobby on the layouts themselves and planned them to allow for that.

In the first layout, “Drawing,” I drew the title with a black Zig and Prismacolor pencils. I scanned drawings that I made and resized them so they would fit comfortably in the pocket placed on the bottom of the page.

I used letter stickers by BasicGrey and Wordsworth to add the subtitle, “2005 Portfolio,” to the pocket holding the artwork. My journaling is inside the file folder, labeled “her story”. It reads:

I have loved to draw for as long as I remember. People have always been my subject of choice. Back in my elementary days, I exchanged sketches of Charlie's Angels for Phil Norris's Star Trek work and Rickey Rowland's car drawings or his fancy name lettering. (Rickey is still an art bud!) Now days I draw either my own made up people (that's the ink girls in the portfolio) or work with photos of people I think have interesting faces. Of course, Lenny Kravitz is the hottest man alive so I've drawn him twice so far this year. (Yum!) Most of my drawings now are done for school but every now and then I do it just for the joy of it.

My newest hobby is knitting. My oldest sister Sue was teaching me how last year right before my mother had her aneurysm and the strokes that followed.

For this layout, I used a pair of knitting needles to begin a scarf. I cast on 15 stitches and completed a few rows. Then I transferred the knitting from the real needle to one that I made from tag board. This made the perfect embellishment for my layout. The title is hand drawn with brush-tip Pitt pens. I added a photo of a basket full of colorful yarn and my journaling is on a large tag that slides underneath it. The journaling reads:

I’m not quite sure what made me want to learn how to knit after spending the first 40 years of my life blissfully ignorant. It turned out to be a blessing for me. My mother’s stroke was followed by almost a month in CCU and then 2 more months at a nursing home before we were able to bring her back home with us. I lost count of the number of scarves I knitted during this time. It gave me something to do at a time I was feeling helpless. Other women at the waiting room who had loved ones in the hospital asked me to teach them how to knit. At any given time there were at least a half dozen women working away to pass the time. The items I made became Christmas presents for all the women in my life – my 7 sisters, my nieces, my nephew’s wives, my best friends. Now it’s time for me to start knitting again. Thankfully this time there’s nobody in my family in the hospital. I’m just doing it because I want to. Besides my Mom needs a new scarf before winter gets here.

Of course, while I was working on these layouts, it set me to thinking about making a small album of the gifts I make for my loved ones. But that’s another project altogether.

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