I am a magazine consumer. Yesterday, I was pulled into Mags and Fags on Elgin Street, and immediately went to the craft magazine section. Now that I'm a craft blogger/person, I need to start reading this stuff. I was appalled at what I saw. Craft magazines are total shit -- unless perhaps I've missed one that is good. This is what I had to sort through:
1) the scrapbooking magazines. There are tons of these. I still don't understand what scrapbooking is, and why anyone would want to do it. Could someone please explain this to me.
2) the knitting magazines. Lovely, but, too hard. Winter would be over before you'd finish these things.
3) the quilting magazines. These were a HUGE disappointment to me! No, I don't want to quilt the American flag, thank you very much. And no, I don't want to quilt care bears, either.
Help! I'm looking for something fun, edgy, crafty with a bit of social commentary. Does such a craft magazine exist?
10 comments:
Ahhhh, I see you're delving into the very heart of craft magazine angst. Very good.
Aggie, dear, I can't help you with your search for a good magazine, but I believe I can explain scrapbooking.
Scrapbooking is essentially an analog version of a blog.
Scrapbooking is where you take a lifetime's worth of photographs out of their albums because some scrapbooking salesperson convinces you that the acid and lignum is destroying your precious memories.
You put these photos in a big box while you shop for hundreds (nay, thousands!) of dollars worth of special acid-and-lignum-free paper, albums, adhesives, circle-cutters, stickers, tools, stamps, templates, and much, much more.
Then you create the first page of your new photo album (scrapbook), matting and cutting and arranging and drawing text and adding cute captions and glueing and so on. It takes about two hours, and you get maybe three of your photos scrapbooked. You do a few more pages, and then you buy a special scrapbook organizing system for keeping all the tools and materials from completely taking over your home.
Eventually you do the math and realize it will take about 73 years worth of evenings to scrapbook all your photos if you stop taking pictures immediately. It is at that point that you abandon scrapbooking, and your photos languish in a box in the basement for the rest of your life.
Sorry to go on and on about it Aggie, but I'm still a little raw from my scrapbooking phase, even though it ended years ago.
Yes, I understand, Zoom. I had suspected that scrapbooking was pure evil. Glad you quit while you were ahead.
There's always Readymade
http://readymademag.com/
I vote for Ready Made Magazine (they also have a book out at chapters). Craft Magazine (craftzine.com) and Made Magazine (http://makezine.com/)
There is also an interesting book at Chapters. I can't remember the name, but it has intersting crafts to do at the office. :P
This is the thing about you craft folks -- you are so damn helpful! Thank you.
Are you suggesting the angst folks aren't helpful?
Oh no. The angst folks are very helpful. And the craftangst folks are even more so!
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