Making things—a radical act?

This new book is a beautiful celebration of doing-it-yourself

“Living in a small apartment I wanted to make fewer, more functional objects,” says Making Things co-author Rose Pearlman.

For most of my magazine career, I edited craft stories. As the home editor at various women’s magazines, I was responsible for the holiday content, which included projects like hollowed-out gourd candle holders, elaborate children’s costumes. So, it is with great confidence that I tell you Making Things by

Erin Boyle

and

Rose Pearlman

is a fantastic craft book. 

The book’s beauty is immediately apparent, but its greatness lies in the way these projects are presented: With crystal clear directions, step-by-step photography when needed, and that hard-to-achieve balance between thorough instructions and flexible techniques that allows for the maker to do it her own way. Anyone who likes to make things will love this book, but it is so much more than a craft book.

Making Things is an invitation to see treasure in the trash. It is a permission slip to do things your own way. It is also a thinly-veiled anti-capitalist manifesto. At risk of sounding too lofty, it’s a whole way of looking at the world—one that I’d lost touch with.

After immersing myself in Erin and Rose’s sphere, I realized that instead of buying the pouch-style purse I’ve been dreaming would make my life easier, maybe I could just affix a strap to a zip pouch I already owned. Suddenly, I saw my stretched-out pajama pants not as something I needed to figure out how to properly dispose of, but rather a lovely, stretchy fabric I could upcycle into yarn to make a potholder, not unlike the ones I’d admired in a fancy boutique in California. My bag of scrap fabric was suddenly begging to become a bojagi-style curtain.

Now, if you’re thinking: Who has time to make their own pot holders? I would counter that the fancy ones cost $45 each! I might also confess that I spent countless hours browsing online shops looking for the perfect purse that was attractive and affordable. Personally? I’d much rather have spent those hours making something.

Erin and Rose address this feeling that there is no time to make things and make the case for why we should make time, writing, “There’s comfort in making things separate and apart from any monetary reward–or even the finished product itself. There’s value in the process itself, value that with any luck is only amplified by the prince and intimacy embedded in the finished object.” 

“The projects in this book are both useful and beautiful and the instructions ask the reader to consider what they can use that they already have,” says Erin Boyle (seen above with Rose Pearlman, left).

When I reached out to Erin and Rose to hear more about Making Things, Rose shared that making the book changed her relationship to consumption, telling me, “The more I made and was able to make, the less I coveted things I saw on the internet or in stores. Making something I could use became so much more rewarding than buying something, and as a result, I had less desire to shop.”

Erin says she hopes that the same thing will happen to the book’s readers. “We wanted this book to encourage a kind of wholesale reimagining of what’s possible when it comes to making things ourselves, even as relatively unskilled makers,” she says. “The goal here is absolutely not perfection, but familiarity with and reconnection to what I see as a fundamental and very human act of making.”

And it’s true: Seeing their instructions for a do-it-yourself tissue box made me think, ‘Hey, I could make that,’ and suddenly the cute Heather Taylor one I’d saved to my wishlist lost its luster.

“I think a return to understanding how things are made, and valuing that process, will become a crucial piece of curbing consumption,” Erin says. “Just because we can mass-produce an endless supply of goods, doesn’t mean we should, and finding the beauty in the alternative of making things slowly, scrappily by hand with things we already have, is one small way to begin to change our value systems and habits.”

It turns out that making things might just be the missing puzzle piece in curbing our consumption. 

So here’s my challenge to you, dear readers: Make a magazine box following Erin and Rose’s step-by-step photos (below). Tear a page from a magazine or catalog that you like (ideally a pretty, thick matte one), crease and tear it into equal halves, so you have a piece for each side of a box, then fold away. Once you’ve made one, I bet you’ll want to make more and you’ll get a little inkling of the magic in this book. 

“You can open this book and within ten minutes have a completed (and beautiful!) project made out of things you found in your recycling bin,” says Erin Boyle.

Making Things is available wherever books are sold, including Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, and your local bookseller.

🎁 GIVEAWAY Thanks to Erin and Rose’s publisher Hardie Grant, I am giving away a copy of Making Things to a paid subscriber. To enter to win the book, subscribe to the paid edition of LIVING SMALL and leave a comment on this post. I’ll pick the winner by 12am ET on May 16, 2024.

Related reading from the archive:

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Last week’s most-clicked link was this reeded-glass look window film.

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3 More Things

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Here’s an enviable galley kitchen reno courtesy of Domino. The designer, Joy Strom, wisely flipped the location of the stove and sink to improve the flow in the small space, but it’s the tiles—both the retro-looking floors and uber-simple backsplash–and all that warm wood that have my heart.

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For his 200th newsletter, horticulturist Dr. Jared Barnes shared 20 digital resources he has found very valuable in his gardening career—and it’s one heck of a list. I had no idea you could do #7, and #8 is a genius tip for researching any gardening topic. If you’re a garden person, his newsletter is a must-read.

Depaving is going mainstream

I’ve been following the work of Depave in Portland for several years, so I was particularly heartened to read this article on BBC.com about the depaving movement growing. If you’re unfamiliar with the idea (basically replacing as much concrete and asphalt with plants and soil) this article a great primer on the idea.

One last thing: Bad news for smaller spaces. 

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