Hobbies: The art of paperback art

Everything seems to be going digital. The printed word may soon be a thing of the past. Newspapers, magazines, even books are being replaced online or with electronic media like smart phones, Kindles and iPads. The smell of a freshly printed magazine or look of fingers smudged with newsprint may someday join the ranks of Kodak film, videotapes and typewriters.

If you have shelves full of old paperbacks and no longer have Kindle-less friends with whom to share them, consider recycling them into three-dimensional works of art. Altered-book artists have been playing with discarded books for years. The appeal of page after page of black-and-white printed paper can't be denied.

One of the most practical book projects is also one of the easiest to make. Simply folding all the book pages in half results in a paper sculpture that is perfect for holding notes, business cards or, in this case, cropped photographs. The pages of a book are definitely not acid-free and therefore are not a good place to save original photos, but they are perfect for displaying color copies or extra prints of favorite photos.

Begin with a paperback book that has 150 or more pages. Pull off the front and back covers (leaving the spine intact), and begin folding. Simply fold each page in half, toward the book's gutter. Fifteen or 20 minutes later, you will have a dome-shaped paper sculpture whose tightly packed folds can hold everything from notes to bills to cards to, yes, even photos.

Print extra copies of favorite photos and cut out the subject in each one, being sure to include different sizes. You can back the cropped photos with colored paper or print the mirror image of each photo and glue the matching images together so that each subject is two-sided. Add a few embellishments to match the theme of the photos, in this case a palm tree, a few waves and a kite made of mirror-image stickers and colored wire.

Tuck the cropped photos and embellishments between the folded pages and place the completed sculpture on a colorful tray, cutting board or other flat surface.

This functional paper sculpture is easy enough to include your kids in its creation. There are so many pages that a few imperfect folds will never be noticed. And if your kids have paper dolls, baseball cards or other thin memorabilia, just imagine how great it would be to display them here.

As an avid reader, I love the idea of recycling my old paperbacks in a new and exciting way. And as an author who knows what happens to books that don't sell (can you spell "landfill"?), it does my heart good to know that they can be re-purposed into something as fun and functional as this photo display.

ContactSandiGenoveseandfindfreevideodemonstrationsofmorephotoprojectsatwww.scrapbookshowgram.com.