DIY Lamp

I didn’t even consider that soap could be made out of bacon grease, like when I heard “animal fat” that just never came to mind

I am once again thinking about neighborhood-scale networks of DIY and mutual aid where community wealth could be created literally for free by collecting things that people would otherwise throw away

Expecting every single person to make soap and broth and compost and mend all their clothes and repair all their electronics and upcycle all of their trash in useful ways is just never gonna work. No one has time to do everything, especially if they’re forced to have a job too

But if one person learns how to make soap, and everyone in the neighborhood brings them leftover animal fat and gets soap in return, it becomes a lot more manageable. Someone else learns how to spin dryer lint, someone else pulps and recycles paper, someone else grows food, someone else raises chickens, etc, etc, and suddenly you’ve got a whole moneyless circular economy going. Less stuff going to landfills, less money going to corporations, more prosperity for everyone

If the concept of getting free things in exchange for trash interests you, find a Buy Nothing Project or a mutual aid organization in your area and get involved!

Also check out trash nothing, what free cycle became! https://trashnothing.com/beta/

My greatnana used to make soap this way for the whole neighborhood. They’d all bring her the grease they’d collected, and she’d go out to the back forty (rendering fat STINKS my friends) and boil and skim off all the tallow in a cauldron over a banked firepit - it was technically a tamale pot, but it could hold you and me and the mailman makes three - and add the lye and herbs and when it was done she’d slice it up and people would come collect their portion. Her only expense was the lye, which is cheap in bulk for starters, and it’s miles cheaper than store bought soap, so her labor yielded real, tangible benefits. This is how people throughout history have gotten the work done. Don’t feel overwhelmed because you can’t do it all yourself. You were never meant to.

being gay is just like. damn it tattoos are expensive. damn it piercings are expensive. damn it getting your hair dyed professionally is expensive. damn it combat boots are expensive. damn it therapy is

One of the weirdest things as a Millennial is explaining DIY to younger generations. Like, before we were couture, punk/alternative/goth/gay fashion was cheap and lowkey crappy. Army surplus boots and Doc Martens hurt to break in. Black was a popular hair colour because you didn’t have to bleach your hair first so you could do your own hair in the bathroom sink. You sewed patches onto a jean jacket because it was cheaper than buying a custom graphic t-shirt. If you wanted jeans ripped, you ripped them yourself. The point was fashion that was accessible to kids in Middle America.

But now the bar is so much higher and nobody gets Home Economics anymore. :/

tbh, this is something a lot of Alt kids need to learn, and need to learn NOW. 

Shit was cheap because that’s what we had access to. Cheap n dirty and now. 

You picked up jeans second third or even fourth hand and yea they had tears in them. Don’t know how to sew, that’s fine, use safety pins! We used waxed floss to sew on our patches because we knew it was stronger than thread but ALSO we had access to a random needle left lying around and the floss in the cabinet. 

It didn’t used to be High Fashion. It was us, in our basements and our friend’s rooms, doing things we saw other kids doing…. but ALSO, it was just… part of the lifestyle. We didn’t know leather care like we do now, but we know it NOW because of Gay Leatherfolk for the most part. We used red and black hair dye, yes, because we didn’t need to bleach it. We also used really dangerous methods to bleach our hair…. don’t do that. 

Learn from what’s available to  you now and be safer definitely, but don’t forget the DIY roots of the movement. You don’t need to be decked in Blackcraft and Dollskill to be cutting edge. You can paint your jacket yourself and use fabric modpodge to seal it, y’know? Then it’s truly one of a kind…. not the same jacket you’ll be seeing on a thousand other alt people at the next concert.

It’s crazy to me now seeing people get their green hair or whatever at a salon for like $100+. I remember in high school someone would get a bottle of developer and everyone would get whatever color they wanted, and we’d all do our hair in someone’s kitchen (whoever had the best sink sprayer, usually). Like, back then, if you wanted a COLOR you usually couldn’t get it at a salon. You had to buy the colored dye at the record store.

Are you part of an alternative community? Queer? Goth? Metal? Punk? Any sort of not-particularly mainstream? LEARN TO DIY.

When I was in school, we used Kool-Aid unsweetened packets to dye our hair. You can use it to dye wool yarn (an animal protein fiber) and it lasts forever, and hair is also an animal protein fiber, so it dyed us just as easily. If you wanted extra longevity, you mixed it with a little vinegar. Goth accessories didn’t appear in stores before Hot Topic, so we made our own with second hand clothes and scads of black lace.

Make Do and Mend, the subcultures edition.

If one did want to learn some DIY sewing skills, you coulkd try:

https://gothfashion.info

And honestly, DIY and thrifting are a lot of fun. Way more fun than scrolling through websites of things you can’t afford, anyway…

(Lilibat’s projects are an excellent way to learn to sew, can confirm, made a bunch of them back in The Day)

Bookmarks: DIY

A simple tutorial on how to make your very own bookmarks.

Materials:

Step One

First, determine the size of bookmarks you want to make. (Mine are typically 2″ x 6.5″.) When you’ve decided on a size that you like, create a new canvas in Photoshop with those dimensions, and make sure it is set to AT LEAST 300 DPI.

Step Two

Draw your bookmark design! Make sure all of your important stuff doesn’t get too close to your edges because you want to leave a tiiiiiny bit of room for error just in case you mess up when you cut them out.

Step Three

After your bookmark design(s) is done, create another new Photoshop canvas that is 8.5″ x 11″ and set to the same DPI as your bookmarks.

Drag and drop as many of your book mark designs as you can onto your new 8.5 x 11 canvas. Don’t put them very close together, though, as you want to leave enough room to comfortably cut them out later.

Step Four

Assuming you don’t have a laser printer, we’re gonna take a little trip to Staples/Office Depot/Office Max!

Save that canvas with all your bookmarks on it as a JPEG and put it on a flash drive. Grab a small stack of your own paper and put it in a folder (make sure you have a way to show the printer what type of paper it is. You may just wanna bring the whole pack with you, because I know some stores want to make sure you’re giving them laser printer paper to print on, as other paper types will mess up their machines). 

Note: I’m not sure about Office Depot/Office Max, but I KNOW Staples will only charge around $0.50 per page to print your image out if you bring your own paper! ♥

Take the flash drive and your paper with you to your nearest office supply store.

Ask the printer there to print out however many copies you want. If you’re very particular about the size of the bookmarks, make sure to tell them to not have it set to “Fit to Size” and instead let it print at 100%.

Step Five

Once your bookmark copies are printed, it’s time to cut them out!

The best way to do this is to use a paper trimmer. You can get a cheap one from WalMart or Michaels for about $5. They’re SUPER useful to have and make cutting straight edges a million times easier.

The reason you want to cut them out before you glue them your poster board/decorative paper is because you want to be able to fit as many bookmarks as you can onto the posters so that you don’t waste any.

Step Six

Time to glue them to your poster(s)/scrap book paper!

I try to buy really unique posterboard that catches the eye and matches the colour schemes of my bookmarks. I usually end up getting metallic colours or holographic poster/paper because that’s what I personally like. I would advise staying away from anything that has textures, though, since you’re going to laminate these later.

Make sure you’re gluing your bookmarks to the BACK of the poster board.

Also, make sure you coat all edges and corners, as you don’t want anything to curl up. A good tip I find is lining any of your bookmark edges up to the edges of the poster board. That way it’s just one or two less edge(s) you have to cut off.

Step Seven

Time to cut out the bookmarks again!

Get as close to the bookmark’s edge as you can so you don’t leave any white poster board backing hanging off the edge. If you have to, it’s totally fine to cut off a millimeter of your bookmark design just to make sure you have a clean trim.

Step Eight

Laminate! Since I already have some Mettaton bookmarks laminated, I’ll use them for this example.

Make sure that when you slip your bookmarks into the lamination sheet, they have a decent amount of space between them. If they get too close, the lamination might not seal all of the way around each bookmark.

Step Nine

Once you get all of your bookmarks laminated, we once again have to cut them out.

It’s very important to leave about a third of a centimeter of lamination on the edge of your bookmarks. If you cut right along the edge of the bookmark, the lamination will eventually peal off, and we don’t want that. We want to keep it nice and sealed.

Be sure to trim the corners a little bit, since they can be kinda sharp and poke you pretty bad.

Step Ten

This part is completely optional, but I love to take an 1/8 inch hole punch and punch a little hole in the top of the bookmark and add a little tassel decoration.

You can find these tassels online from China on Ebay or Aliexpress for pretty cheap. The prices are all about the same no matter who you buy from, so I can’t really give a specific vendor who has the best prices. (Note: pretty obvious, but if you buy them within the US, you’re gonna pay a lot more.)

Bonus Info:

If none of my instructions have made any sense, this video does a wonderful job of explaining the process of bookmark making for artist alleys and whatnot.