finds: dear plastic’s paper making kit

It arrived! My recycled and up-cycled paper making kit from Dear Plastic made it all the way from Australia to Taiwan without one little bit of damage. See me unpack it.

Dear Plastic Paper Making Kit ... opening the box.

Dear Plastic Paper Making Kit ... the packaging has gone.

Dear Plastic Paper Making Kit ... reading all the lovely hand-written notes.

Dear Plastic Paper Making Kit ... the kit!

The box for the kit is made out of old Sydney Opera house plastic posters and it came with hand-written instructions. I haven’t opened the jar to investigate what’s in it yet but I’m sure the instructions or the video (below) will tell all. You can buy one, too! Click here to visit the Dear Plastic website.

So what can I make with my beautifully recycled paper? I was thinking of putting together a cute little art and culture zine to distribute around Taichung City every two weeks or so. Or…

• Seeds in your paper? Once you’ve finished with it it can be planted!
• Make a recycled paper notebook.
• Here’s a super awesome list of 55 things to do with handmade paper.
• Browse Google images for some visual inspiration.

I also found this cool idea for making recycled paper beads. These beads put me in mind me of a jewellery making book I had in the 80s.

What else? Leave your ideas as a comment below!

You might also like:

• JoB likes: HAND-MADE WEDDINGS | I explain how I made the invites for my wedding
• JoB likes: HAND-DRAWN HILARIOUSNESS | about a good friend who draws very funny pictures
• finds: adelaidian freestyle sewing | about a girl who sews people’s portraits, awesome
• JoB likes: DAKENG SCENIC AREA | there’s a whole paper and cardboard shop and museum here, even paper handbags
• JoB likes: OTHER CHRISTMASie STUFF | how I made my 2009 Christmas cards

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Copyright © 2011. This website is for personal non-commercial use only. All written work and imagery copyright to jar of buttons unless otherwise stated.

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JoB likes: CONTEMPORARY ART THAT GETS PEOPLE READING AGAIN

A metal artist and good friend of mine – Esther (廖幸玲), who lives here in Taichung – has signed up for a competition created by a big Taiwanese book publisher. The company has asked people to submit an innovative idea which will inspire people to start reading very old Chinese classics. My friend has an amazing idea and has been accepted into the voting stage. So now she needs your vote to win!

Actually, the idea reminded me a bit of Singaporean artist Michael Lee’s book sculptures.

'Every Architecture is a Banana', 2008, book sculpture, found book, 42 x 29.7 x 15 cm. Edition of 1 Collection of the artist. Image from michaellee.sg.

Here’s a bit about her proposal from the artist herself:

In my proposal, I wrote out an idea related to a book called “Dream of the Red Chamber” (紅樓夢) which is one of the top five Chinese literature classics. It’s about the ups and downs of a super big family and is set around 300 years ago. Over 300 figures appear in the book and there are lots and lots of superb and beautiful words and poems as well as an amazing descrition of how people lived at that time. It also presents a comparison between the poor and the rich, the higher, lower and lowest classes, love and hate, dream and realities, the powerful and the weak…

However, such a book has been dying in the readers’ market as the language is too hard for most people to read and understand. So I want to try my best to tell the story in a way people would understand – using modern language, metal work and other media. I would like to create a pop-out story book to give back to the world the beauty of this old classic and hopefully evoke some further discussion and sharing of it and interest in it.

At the moment I am at the second reviewing stage, trying to get into the final ten. To give me a better chance at getting there I need lots and lots (and lots!) of votes from Internet supporters. It would be highly appreciated if you could give me a vote by clicking on the link below. You can even vote more than once by voting from different computers because the voting system works by recording your IP address. It would be 3009% appreciated if you could spread the news to other people for me as well.

Go on… vote!

Click here to vote and show your support for Esther, reading and art. The page is in Chinese, so once you click through, you will see Esther’s name, (廖幸玲), and a number which shows the number of votes she has already. Just above the number you will see a little blue rectangle with the words “投他一票”. Simply click on the blue rectangle to show your support and record your vote.

As Ether herself says, “Thank you soooooooooooooooo much for your kind patience of reading this mail. And I would like to thank you for all the effort and care you have given me on this matter.”

Esther currently trains with and works part-time for Taichung-based metalwork studio Zamama. I wrote about them in them and the other inhabitants of Stock 20 in the winter issues of GuanXi.

Important update! Voting ends this Friday, 15 January, 2010.

You might also like:

• finds: new taichung food and art places | part two: z gallery
• JoB likes: HAND-DRAWN HILARIOUSNESS
• finds: adelaidian freestyle sewing
• write up: waterfall, 2009 summer issue function
• JoB likes: THOUGHT-PROVOKING JEWELLERY
• write up: viewpoints and viewing points – 2009 asian art biennale

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Thank you for supporting jar of buttons.

Copyright © 2011. This website is for personal non-commercial use only. All written work and imagery copyright to jar of buttons unless otherwise stated.

News: JoB’s 2010 in review

I am being very lazy and posting the summary below that WordPress.com kindly put together for me. First post for the first week of 2011 down! No, I will try to put together one more post for this week and I did actually think this info was interesting.

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads, “This blog is on fire!”

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 5,100 times in 2010. That’s about 12 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 40 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 59 posts. There were 223 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 93mb. That’s about 4 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was March 22nd with 152 views. The most popular post that day was critique: is taichung soulless?.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, hungryintaipei.blogspot.com, taiwanderful.net, bloglovin.com, and en.wordpress.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for taichung jazz festival 2010, taichung jazz festival, jar of buttons, cardboard furniture, and sea turtle.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

critique: is taichung soulless? March 2010
14 comments

2

write up: waterfall, 2009 summer issue function February 2010

3

write up: match cafe March 2010

4

write up: viewpoints and viewing points – 2009 asian art biennale January 2010
5 comments

5

JoB likes: DAKENG SCENIC AREA January 2010
2 comments

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Thank you for supporting jar of buttons.

Copyright © 2011. This website is for personal non-commercial use only. All written work and imagery copyright to jar of buttons unless otherwise stated.