Inspiration for creative summer projects

REVIEWS BY LINDA STANKARD

If you believe the adage that idle hands are the devil's workshop, then keeping yourself busy with hobbies and crafts is a great way to hold more mischievous pursuits at bay. There are guidebooks and manuals for all types of craft activities; we've chosen three excellent new entries to give you a few ideas for perfecting a familiar craft or taking up a new one.

Billed as "the most complete guide to scrapbooking ever published," Encyclopedia of Scrapbooking, edited by Tracy White, has page after page of eye-appealing photos from actual scrapbooks in addition to step-by-step instructions for creating your own beautiful "memory book" pages. If you're a beginner, you may want to skip ahead to the chapters on mini books, gift albums and cards. These are smaller, relatively quick projects, but they can get you started working with the materials and techniques described throughout the book and used in more ambitious scrapbooking projects.

Many seemingly difficult techniques are demystified here, such as transferring images to a variety of surfaces including fabric, cardstock, tags and mica and creating dimensional effects with special glues and glazes. Weddings, anniversaries, a summer vacation, prom night and, of course, the early stages of a child's life, can all be chronicled creatively in the pages of a scrapbook, with memorabilia and whimsy complementing the photos. According to the Encyclopedia, the popularity of scrapbooks dates to the 1800s. Author Mark Twain got involved in the trend when he invented a product called Mark Twain's Adhesive Scrapbook, which had prepasted pages. We may live in more hectic times, but we can still capture our special moments by preserving them in scrapbooks.

If scrapbooking is not your bag, you might prefer Sherri Haab's Designer Style Handbags. One thing a woman can always use is another purse, and as Haab notes, "making your own designer handbags is inexpensive and provides a means of artistic expression as well as function." Her book has three main sections: Getting Started, Sew Easy Bags and No-Sew and Embellished Bags. Getting Started guides you through chapters like Choosing Fabrics, Basic Tools and Closures and Fasteners. Sew Easy Bags takes you step-by-step through the creation of several handbags—from the "classic fabric tote" to the "glam evening bag," with large, clear photos and text demonstrating and explaining each point. The last section contains two of my personal favorites, the cigar box purse and the "altered book" purse. The first is self-explanatory—add a handle and your own creative touches to a cigar box and voila!—a funky, sturdy box bag. The second makes use of the outside covers on old cloth-bound books. The pages are replaced with a fabric insert. Handles and any desired decorations are added and you're ready to "book it" to your next appointment (without breaking your pocketbook!).

For an old-fashioned, tried and true hobby, consider the beauty and creativity reflected in a quilt. Though the fine handiwork of a quilt can seem intimidating, British quilting expert Celia Eddy says making a quilt "is a bit like baking a cake." All you need is a list of ingredients and step-by-step instructions for putting them together. Eddy provides all that and more in The Quilter's Recipe Book, a wonderful new collection suitable for both beginners and advanced quilters. In addition to a clearly illustrated section on the basics of quilting, Eddy includes patterns for 100 quilting blocks, from appliqués to log cabin blocks. Quilters will appreciate having so many traditional blocks compiled into one handy reference. From "Bear's Paw" to "Bridal Path," these quilting blocks, each shown in a full-color photograph, should inspire idlers to pick up fabric and needle and cook up their own quilting masterpiece.


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