Composite Scrapbooks
Sometimes it happens that you get very tired of one of the pictures in your scrapbook. A good way to make it fresh and interesting again is to introduce new people or things. You will easily find among your store of loose pictures a horse and cart, or a dog, or a man, or a giraffe, which, when cut out, will fit in amusingly somewhere in the old picture. If you like, a whole book can be altered reasonably in this way, or made ridiculous throughout.
Scrap-Covered Screens
A screen is an even more interesting thing to make than a scrapbook. The first thing to get is the framework of the screen, which will either be an old one the covering of which needs renewing, or a new one made by the carpenter. The next thing is to cover it with canvas, which you must stretch on tightly and fasten with small tacks; and over this should be pasted another covering of stout paper, of whatever color you want for a background to the pictures. Paste mixed with size should be used in sticking it. After the pictures are all arranged they should be stuck with the same material, and a coat of paper varnish given to the whole, so that it can be cleaned occasionally.
Collecting Stamps
Stamp-collecting is more interesting if money is kept out of it and you get your stamps by gift or exchange. The best way to begin is to know some one who has plenty of foreign correspondence and to ask for all his old envelopes. Nothing but time and patience can make a good collection. To buy it, is to have little of the collector's joy.
Postage-Stamp Snakes
Old American stamps can be used for making snakes. There is no need to soak the stamps off the envelope paper: they must merely be cut out cleanly and threaded together. A big snake takes about 4,000 stamps. The head is made of black velvet stuffed with cotton wool, and beads serve for eyes. A tongue of red flannel can be added.