Roll your own: make cameras, toys, and consumer electronics out of paper

I don't need to convince you of the virtues of paper, but here it is once again, providing us with hours of inexpensive entertainment in lean times.

So, before you and your credit card head for the Kit's Camera fire sale, Best Buy, or Toys R Us to keep boredom at bay this summer, try rolling some of these same consumer goods off your printer at home (but don't try to spend any play money that you print out).

Paper cameras

In a post awhile back I mentioned the Corbis templates for pinhole cameras, but there are certainly others.

Dirkon: the paper camera is from 1979 Communist Czechoslovakia (so says Wikipedia).

The Rubikon (wow!) is a more recent update on the concept. (Look for the tiny "Download Rubikon" link below the post.)

Paper electronics

The models here don't actually function for any other than a decorative purpose, but they are entertaining all the same. This link has a whole mess of paper stuff, but most interestingly, it has links to paper electronics:

Return to your youth with a Commodore PET computer, or stop that nagging teen in his or her tracks with a paper iPod or cell phone. ("Son, I GAVE you an iPod last week.")

Paper productivity tools

Oops, I spoke too soon: Pocket mod, the paper PDA is not just for show, and can apparently be used to accomplish productivity tasks.

On second look, Pocket mod is pretty darned cool. I challenge you to design and print one out and report back on whether it worked for you.

Vintage paper dolls and toys

Any bored kids in the house? Or do you just like to look at vintage paper toys? As for me, yes and yes, and so I plan to hit a few of these stops in the coming weeks:

The Toymaker. Wonderful vintage-inspired designs. Marilyn Scott-Waters also has a book, if you want to save your printer from a workout.

Hazelruth's is a delightful vintage sewing/crafts web site all around, with a specific post devoted to paper dolls.

Squidoo has a whole "lens" on the general topic of paper toys, or, if you just like to gander at vintage paper dolls, there's always Flickr.

Enjoy.

Buying 200 lbs of typewriters, and: Your Typewriter Journal Questions Answered

Oops. One of the perils of typecasting is that you sometimes name images the same thing, and overwrite them. Thus note that the original typecast that once appeared here has been overwritten by images that have nothing to do with this post:




Note: Olivander just added the following comment related to scanning photos: "Unless you'll be printing this thing on a color-separated web press (answer: no), halftoning the photos is probably the last thing you want to do. For most printing processes, 120dpi will come out nicely."

<---- By the way, information about the typewriter journal is in the link in the left margin of this site. No, not there. Look higher. Toward the top of the page.

Halftone trickery

Random Strikethru drawing: win typewriter button set from the Regional Assembly of Text

I know that I have some questions to answer about the typewriter journal project. I am assembling a Q&A, so look for it in the next week. Note that the deadline is June 15th, not May 30th. (Do you get the sense I am winging the details of this project? Worry not. It will get done.)

In other news, welcome to the First Official Strikethru Drawing For A Random Prize (FOSDFARP), which in this case is a set of three typewriter buttons from the Regional Assembly of Text.

Instructions to win: leave a comment on this post, in which you make a random remark about ephemera, pens, buttons, typewriters, cameras, or any related item of paper-based nerd-dom, for the entertainment of your fellow entrants.

You: "I'm too cool to enter this drawing."
Me: Wrong. Everyone into this general scribeomechanical hobby is a nerd. Face facts.

You: "I don't wear buttons."
Me: I am sure you know a person/bulletin board that does, and we need to get the typewriting message out there, my friends.

You: "How will you pick the winner?"
Me: The winner will be chosen at random and announced on the blog sometime in June. Winner will e-mail me their address, and I will send em off this cool set of buttons, whereupon they shall bask in the glory of winning the FOSDFARP.

You: "Why the hell are you having a FOSDFARP? What is this, Publisher's Clearing House?"
Me: I thought someone might like some typewriter buttons, and it's time to shake things up out there in the typosphere. It's CONTEST TIME!!!

Leave a comment. You know you want to. By the way, are there any new or prospective typecasters out there that aren't listed in my Typosphere list? If so, I want to hear about it.

Vancouver: A paper nerd's review

I finally visited Vancouver B.C. last weekend, and dropped by two places of interest to paper types: The Regional Assembly of Text and Paper-Ya. The former has a nice display of typewriters, at least 20 or so in various places around the store (not for sale), and I couldn't leave without a Coronomatic 8000 t-shirt. As it happens, I charged my camera battery up before leaving for Vancouver, and brought my camera... without putting the battery back in, and therefore I have no pictures, but there are plenty on Flickr. A curious thing about the RAOT is that behind the sales counter there is a collection of filing cabinets and drawers containing intriguing suggestions of various stationery items and papers, but they aren't accessible to customers.

Paper-Ya is on Granville Island, where there is a public food and crafts market so obscenely decadent that it makes Seattle's Pike Place market seem sad and shabby by comparison (sorry, Seattle). I shall digress by telling you that I had a cream puff dessert thing in one of the market bakeries that was literally the best dessert, and possibly thing, I have ever tasted. But back to Paper-Ya: it blew my mind. Don't let the web site deceive you (its use of mystery meat navigation may in fact prevent you from locating its content)- whoever buys for that store is AWESOME.



Firstly, the selection of high-quality pocket notebooks is something to behold. You've got your Apicas and your Clairfontaines and your Moleskines and Rhodias, sure. But Penco? Rollbahn? A dozen others I've never heard of? Throw in your bookbinding supplies, handmade paper, fountain pens, datebooks, and related accessories of the paper trade, all tasteful, high quality, and from interesting corners of the globe, that you pretty much don't find anywhere in any retail store, ever, and well, Paper-Ya is the promised land.

There aren't tons of good pictures of this place on Flickr (here's one that gives a small eye-view. And another. And this.) but trust me, you're going to want to proceed there at once.

Update: Here is a random link about notebooks that I enjoyed. Also check out the Black Cover blog, which is a blog about the search for the perfect Moleskine alternative.

Portland, Oregon: where zines still reign

As I've surely mentioned, I got on the zine bandwagon sometime in the bygone nineties (did you?), a few years out of college. I've lately been pondering the current state of low-fi, slap-dash periodicals (cough cough typewriter journal cough cough) now that society has crammed every last conceivable print outlet into some sort of eyeball-scorching digi-gadget. Perhaps creating a DIY print periodical amidst 2009's all-digital regime is an edgier statement than it was in 1992.

I'm soon visiting Portland (OR), which, as far as I can tell, remains the holy land of hand-stapled screeds (and typewriters and vintage cameras-- what are you waiting for?). You can even download and print a zine that lists every place in Portland that you can find a zine, such as Powell's Books ("the largest independent used and new bookstore in the world") and Microcosm Publishing.

The city also has an annual three-day zine symposium, and offers year-round support to the low-tech print enthusiast at the Independent Publishing Resource Center. See you there.

On a note unrelated neither to this post nor the blog at large, I am a ginormous fan of First Aid Kit, a Swedish teenage singing duo. Oh, here they are again.

Odds and ends about typewriting, ephemera, and Charles Schulz

Jett Morton is one of us.

Interesting article about the state of typewriting in Indonesia: "...in much of Indonesia, the humble typewriter still reigns."

Typewriter shops: and another one bites the dust.

Richard Scarry books are full of marvelous illustrations of creatures using typewriters, rotary telephones, pot-bellied stoves, and other fondly-remembered inventions of pre-virtual times. This fact aside, it is true that current editions of these books show ample signs of modern-day tampering.

Battle to the death: Pocket Moleskine vs. Levenger shirt pocket briefcase.

Looking to waste time on the web? (who isn't?) Have you waded around in the Ephemera pool in Flickr lately? Kinda interesting. And, hand-carved stamps are cool. Am I the only one around here who has a thing for stamps? Parcel Post has some purty retro paper stuff. Kind of on the girlier side.

Lastly, in honor of several good people I know who lost their jobs today, the dark humor of early Charles Schulz: