The following illustrations and instructions for making a scrapbook were originally published in 1916.
Homemade Scrapbooks
The covers of your scrapbook may be of cardboard from dry goods boxes. If you haven’t any boxes at home you can get them for the asking at a dry goods store. The scrapbook leaves should be of manilla wrapping paper. Any merchant will sell you what you need at a trifle more than it costs him. The size of your scrapbook pages should be regulated by the size of the sheets of wrapping paper, so the paper may be cut with little or no waste.
The way to prepare the front cover of the scrapbook in Fig. 1 is shown in Fig. 2. Cut a strip 1 inch wide from the binding edge of this cover, and then with a piece of drilling about 3-1/2 inches wide hinge the strip to the edge you cut it from. Coat the piece of drilling with glue and fold it over the strips so its edges will lap over both the upper and lower surfaces of the cover.
Punch three holes through the back cover and the hunger strip of the front cover, one near each end and one through the center.
If you haven’t a punch for punching the leaves of the scrapbook use the point of a nail. Figure 3 shows how to index the pages with tabs lapped and pasted to both sides of the sheet, and Fig. 4 suggests an arrangement of scraps. When an article occupies both sides of a clipping paste it along one margin as shown.
Lace together the covers and leaves with a shoelace. Pass the lace down through the center holes, along the outside of the back cover to one end, up through the holes at that end, along the front cover to the holes at the other end, down through these holes, along the back cover to the center holes, up through them, and then tie the ends in a bowknot.
By covering the front and back covers with denim, canvas or cambric, lapping and sewing the cloth to both sides of the front cover (Fig. 5), and providing flaps upon the piece fastened to the back cover (Fig. 6), a more attractive scrapbook will be obtained, and the leaves will be protected by the flaps.
Figure 7 shows a scrapbook made like a letter-file. Get a cardboard box about 10 inches wide, 12 inches long and 3 inches deep, separate one long side from the corners, and with a strip of linen hinge it to open as shown in Fig. 8. Then cut a strip about 1 inch wide from one long edge of the cover, and hinge it back in place with a linen strip (Fig. 9). Place the cover upon the box and sew the turned down side edge and ends of the hinged strip to the box. The scrapbook will then be ready for its pages, which may be prepared as shown in Figs. 3 and 4.
Source: The herald. (New Orleans, La.), 18 May 1916.
