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Crafty Zine with an eco theme

Launch gallery slideshow

Swap Coordinator:TangleCrafts (contact)
Swap categories: Crafts  Zines  Paper Crafts 
Number of people in swap:10
Location:International
Type:Type 3: Package or craft
Last day to signup/drop:July 6, 2009
Date items must be sent by:August 3, 2009
Number of swap partners:3
Description:

I am extending the deadline of this swap by 1 week, to make sure everyone has plenty of time to work on their projects!

Two of my favourite things – zines & craftiness! Your challenge is to make a craft-zine with an eco-friendly/green/recycled/upcycled/re-purposed theme.

Maybe you make envelopes out of magazine pages, or bags from reclaimed fabrics? Do you save all your junkmail and food packaging to make notebooks? Do you knit with yarn from unraveled sweaters? The zine can be about any craft/s from embroidery to collage, printmaking to bookbinding, dyeing to knitting to anything else you can think of, so long as there is an eco-friendly slant. (Recipes & gardening tips are also acceptable.)

You could make a showcase of your finished projects, with links to where you found the instructions, or talk about your eco-crafting inspiration and ideas. Instructions for a favourite project would be great, but please just make sure these are your own and NOT copied from a book or from a commercially produced pattern/project/kit or be a rip-off of anybody else's instructions. Basically, make a zine from your own craft idea!

You can include anything else in the zine that you like, maybe a story, puzzle, quiz, your own photos, prints, feature-article, background to why you chose a particular project, or why crafting is important to you etc.

What's a zine? It's basically a self-produced magazine or booklet. You can hand-write & photocopy it, or use a word processor & print it out on your home printer. You can hand-draw or print illustrations, use your own photos, or make it mostly text.

For this swap, please make your zine from at least 2 full letter-size pages (these can be folded/cut as small as you like). You can use more sheets, but not less. If you fold 2 pages in half your zine will be 8 pages; cut and fold in half again and it will be 16 pages (& so on). You can bind it how you like – stapling, or a hole punch + bookrings are probably easiest, or you could get creative with stitches; it's up to you. You can use whatever paper you like. Get creative!

The swap date for this at the end of July so you have plenty of time to work on your ideas! As people will be putting a lot of time into this swap, ratings of 5 or just below only, please.

Discussion

hydro75 05/28/2009 #

I like this concept, but I'm a little confused about not being able to include instructions that we didn't get from somewhere else. Technically, none of the things I do that I consider to be "eco-friendly" crafts were my own idea. For example, I make envelope corner bookmarks, which I learned from Lisa Volrath's site... I make jewelry from found objects and handmade paper from junk mail and other scraps, which is certainly nothing new... maybe I'm misunderstanding your directions, but I personally would be hard-pressed to come up with a project that I "invented" myself.

Putting this one on my watchlist until I have a better grasp.... sounds like fun! :)

howunremarkable 05/28/2009 #

I'm going to put this on my watch list! Hopefully I will have the time come July.

annan 05/28/2009 #

I will go to the bookbinding summer course in june so will have lots to write about in my zine =)

TangleCrafts 06/16/2009 #

Sorry I didn't see these comments here earlier. What I mean by not including somebody else's instructions is just not to cut and paste from somebody else's site without crediting them, and not to include a chart or instructions that are usually only available to paying customers. Basically, I don't want anyone to get into trouble for contravening copyright laws!

I thought it would be nice if you have worked a project from somebody else's instructions to write in your own zine about how you adapted it or modified it as you went along, and (for example) any tips you have for how to get the best results, based on your own experiments. I was just thinking more of getting a personal interpretation rather than repeating exactly what you can read somewhere else.

hydro75's jewelry from found objects and scraps sounds like the perfect subject to write about. I was clearly unclear in my description, but I wasn't trying to say that you have to 'invent' an original idea, just to write about something eco-crafty in your own words, and illustrate it with your own examples. Does that make more sense?

TangleCrafts 06/16/2009 #

Annan, I'm very jealous of your bookbinding summer course. I hope I get to read your zine!

TangleCrafts 06/16/2009 #

P.S. For example, a recent zine I wrote for another swap was all about French knitting. You can find instructions for French knitting all over the internet, but I added my own diagrams, wrote my own instructions, and included lots of suggestions for how you could make French knitters of different sizes using various ordinary household stuff, based on my own experiments. Then I added a couple of project ideas, with hand-drawn illustrations.

So just put things in your own words & add a few photos (or pics) of what you've made. That's all I mean.

TangleCrafts 07/ 6/2009 #

I'm internet-less at home, at the moment, so please bear with me - partners will be assigned by Wednesday at the latest, but hopefully tomorrow. :-)

TangleCrafts 07/24/2009 #

I have extended the deadline of this swap by 1 week, to allow for a participant who contacted me to say she would have to send late, otherwise. However, please feel free to still send by the original send-by date - I'm sure your partners will be very happy to receive their swaps early!

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