Magazine inspires youthful creators

Craft, a new magazine that aims to give the art of traditional crafting a younger, more hip attitude, is now available. The magazine’s format reminds me of a hardbound craft book encyclopedia that was popular in the 1970s, another era when crafting enjoyed a resurgence of interest. Some of the same crafts are featured in the magazine – its third issue – including macrame and making homemade play dough. But that’s where the similarity ends.

The third issue, which has a Japanese crafts theme, offers art-on-the-edge craft news articles, such as the one about a Brazilian artist who creates nonwearable garments made of condoms as a way to talk about AIDS, or the one about the woman in Belgium who takes a paintbrush to her garden in winter when the grass is brown and plants are nothing but gaunt, leafless stalks.

Some of the projects in the magazine also have an edgy aspect, such as the lamp made by using empty plastic butter containers as molds, then decorating the plaster base with human eyes cut from paper.

The magazine puts emphasis on the fun of making things from unusual materials, such as mud, or fishing lures.

Items crafted from recycled materials such as beer can tabs and empty plastic soda bottles are aimed to appeal to those in a “green” frame of mind.

Web site addresses abound in the magazine, sending those who make things on new crafting tangents. The addresses are easy to spot in the text because they are printed in pink.

A visit to the magazine’s Web site at www.craftzine.com features a link that will take you to a Web site where can learn how to make a dress with an elasticized top with the help of step-by-step photos. The written instructions accompanying the photos are easy to follow. The same is true of the instructions in the magazine.

The third issue also features an article about buttons and one about the anatomy of a sewing machine.

And those who knit will find complete instructions for knitting a kimono.

The magazine measures approximately 6 inches by 9 inches and contains 160 pages, making it substantial enough to function as a paperback book. Only a few of those pages are taken up by advertising. Its price per copy may give some a case of “sticker shock,” though. The magazine’s typeface is smaller than most middle-age eyes may find comfortable, but that should not deter them from taking a look at the magazine. Young people, however – and the young at heart – will find that the magazine reflects youth culture and aims to inspire a yen for making stuff in the younger generation.

A reader e-mailed that her mother had been in her younger days a practitioner of an art called vue d’optique. She described it as the process of making a three-dimensional picture from paper. She wanted to know whether I had ever seen such art or knew anything about it. Alas, I had not. Intrigued, I turned to the Internet as a resource.

At first, the hits I turned up on the Web were all about antique hand-colored views of the world, clearly not what the reader described to me.

I tried again, adding the word “history” to “vue d’optique.” This time I found my way to www.hamiltonparanormal.com – which gave me momentary pause until I remembered that the Internet often creates strange bedfellows. I clicked on “history” and discovered that vue d’optique was a form of paper collage with roots in Japan, that the French and Venetians took the technique a few steps further, evolving it into paper sculpture that created three-dimensional pictures from a two-dimensional print.

The article went on to say that the craft “as we know it today developed in the 1930s in the heartland of the USA.” This was during the Depression era when artists and crafters had little money for supplies. They used what they had, often “images from Christmas cards sent by charitable agencies.”

The craft required multiple copies of the same image to build the picture from background, to middle ground to foreground, usually three or four copies. Each cut-out piece was shaped in certain ways before it was glued in place.

The elements of the picture were cut out with scissors, and other tools were used to curl or bend the image according to what the artist wanted the finished result to look like.

Snippets

Lincoln area scrapbookers, quilters and crafters will get together to participate in Scrappin’ For the Cure 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 15, at the Mount Jefferson Junior High School gym in Lee. Beverages and lunch are provided free of charge.

Special guests at the event will be Connie Rand, author of a quilting book who will display her quilts; and Sandra Hatch, editor of Quilter’s World magazine and other quilting publications.

Creative Memories consultants will provide supplies and answer questions about products and techniques. They will help beginners get started in scrapbooking.

The event will benefit the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Those who wish may send a donation to: Nicky Jandreau, 1041 Lee Road, Lincoln 04457. Checks should be made payable to Susan G. Komen Maine Affiliate.

Members of the Verona Island Women’s Club are seeking creative people to participate in its Christmas Craft Fair to be held 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 27, at the Verona Island town hall. Call Cora Webster at 469-3740 or Marlene Smith, 469-7992, to arrange table rental. The cost is $15 per table, or $7.50 for a half-table.

Call Ardeana Hamlin at 990-8153, or e-mail ahamlin@bangordailynews.net.