All posts in DIY

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• • DIY
  • Miscellaneous

  Summer Fun While Thinking Big in Toronto

  July 9, 2012 • deb singh

  Summer in the city is a great idea. It can yield heat waves, festivals, and lots of social moments. It can also be smelly with garbage and overrun raccoons, boring if you don’t have money, and full of drama.

  I love summer in the city. As a city kid, I have tons of ideas to keep the sweat off your brow and have a great time (with cash or none at all) and still figure out how to stay engaged with what’s going on with your city!

  25 things to do this summer in Toronto! (And a few to do anywhere)

  1. Go to a MAD Pride event – MAD Pride week is happening from July 10th-15th with all free events.

  2. Check out Taylor Creek, Seaton Park or the Don Valley – this is a huge park that goes across Broadview & Danforth over to Main St. There’s the river and creek and you could even fish if you want to. Connect with nature!

  3. Try acupuncture – my recommended spot is Six Degrees Community Acupuncture, sliding scale starts at $25.

  4. Go to all the shops in your local community and buy stuff if you have money – I find that when there’s an H&M around the corner, I ignore my local clothing shops, so check out food and other items in your local neighbourhood. You will be surprised and you’ll be supporting your own community!

  5. Go to the Harbourfront – there’s a pile of festivals every week and it’s free to get in and free to window shop.

  6. Check out the 401 Richmond Building (at Spadina) – This artists’ building is full of galleries and studios, openings and contemporary art and free!

  7. Visit the Native Canadian Centre and their awesome gift shop – Most of the gifts in the gift shops are affordable and most of the monies go to Indigenous people who make the art and their communities.

  8. Volunteer for Take Back the Night’s Planning Committee – Meetings start July 18th at 6pm, 17 Phoebe St.

  9. Choreograph a dance routine – my select songs are: “Part of Me” by Katy Perry, “Red Girl” by a Tribe Called Red, “Wasteland” by LAL and “Starships” by Nicki Minaj.

  10. Call a crisis line – even when we are feeling great, we can always use the support. TRCC/MWAR’s crisis line 416-597-8808.

  11. Eat ice cream and/or freezies – need I say more to feed the soul?

  12. Learn about Pride this year – including Queers for Social Justice (they created a night march, and die-in demonstrations) and the Trans march.

  13. Learn a new recipe and practice.

  14. Try swimming or running – Very cheap ways of exercise and varies in high and low impacts to the body.

  15. Wear a tiara – if you don’t have one, you can always get them from the dollar store!

  16. Download music – my faves right now are “Alors On Dance” by Stromae feat Kanye West, Whitney Houston dance remixes, and covers by Lucas Silveira

  17. Check out Caribana on Aug. 4th long weekend!

  18. Watch cool movies – A Dolphin Tale (a film about a dolphin and kids with dis/different abilities), Pariah (a film about a young Black lesbian coming into her youth).

  19. Talk to your parents about something you wouldn’t normally talk to them about – Freak them out and surprise them at the same time!

  20. Make a gift for your best friend with stuff you find around the house – old jewelery, paper, markers, whatever.

  21. Make dinner for your family with all cold food!

  22. Have a nail polish party – include all genders!

  23. Read some graphic novels – I’m into Life with Archie by Michael Uslan and Paul Kupperberg, American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

  24. Take lots of pictures of yourself and other beautiful things and write captions under them like: “I love myself.”

  25. Tell the folks who you spend the summer with that you love them.

• • (dis)Ability
  • Body Politics
  • DIY

  Why My Hearing Aid is a Political Statement

  April 19, 2011 • Shoshana Erlich

  Sometimes having a disability sucks. It isn’t always about the ableist attitudes of others, sometimes just living in a world where there are things other people can do that you can’t is really crappy too. Not to mention all of the technology that goes along with being disabled, whether it is a white cane, voice to speech or speech to voice software, a wheelchair, crutches or a hearing aid. Virtually any disability comes with some sort of technology that either marks someone as disabled or tries to mediate that disability.

  For my hearing loss I use lots of different things depending on the situation I am in. When I’m at school or in bigger events I use sign language interpreters. For me that is amazing because I know ASL, and they are situations that a hearing aid can never cope with. Usually when I am in small groups, at home (no one in my family signs) or one on one with people I use a hearing aid, either with or without an FM system.

  Hearing aids aren’t like regular ears or regular hearing. While most people can tune out the sound of a person turning the pages of their newspaper, or an annoyingly loud fan, a hearing aid catches all sound regardless of what it is and amplifies it. This means that a newspaper can becoming deafening or a fan can completely overpower a conversation. To try and fix this, we get even more technology, that is the FM system. The FM system has a microphone that you can move closer to the person who is talking so that you can cut out more of the background noise. It also has all these fancy programs that are supposed to make the person sound louder against the background noise too, but how well it works really depends on the person and the hearing loss and the way their hearing aid is programmed. For me it helps a lot in some situations, and in others, we’re still trying to work out all of the bugs in the system.

  (more inside…)

• • DIY
  • Rape Culture

  Campus gropers told to look over shoulders

  February 27, 2011 • Jenna Owsianik

  

  Last semester at least three women reported being groped while on The University of British Columbia campus. Almost predictably the message from police was for us ladies to watch ourselves and make sure we took the proper steps to avoid being the next target. I didn’t hear police warning men to stop assaulting women.

  Then a few weeks ago I came across some signs near the university library giving tips to the campus gropers on how to keep getting away with violating women. Slightly puzzled by their intended meaning I tried sleuthing for the person or people who posted them. No one came forward, but my hunch is whoever put them up was using a sort of dark humour to slam the victim blaming discourses travelling through the university. I’m not sure how effective the signs were in offsetting the standard narrative of putting the responsibility on women after assaults take place. But, they definitely made me smile because I thought, “Hey, I’m not the only one who is fed up here!”

  In case you have trouble reading the above sign it says:

  ATTENTION GROPERS

  Based on recent incidents of men groping women on campus, the public has become increasingly concerned with risky groper behaviour. We have compiled a series of tips we think would help you.

  TIP #1:
  Frame your entire day, every day, around your groping

  If you are constantly brainstorming opportunities to grope, noting campus areas amenable to groping, and looking over your shoulder to avoid being caught groping, you can enjoy a life full of groping with impunity.

  Hey Women,
  Tired of making your life revolve around them? We are too.

  
  

• • DIY
  • Miscellaneous

  !! Rebel, REBEL !!

  January 4, 2011 • Diandra Jurkic-Walls

  Prince George, BC-based derby girl, social justice activist, youth counsellor, and DIY’r Laura Burkholder is putting together her first zine as a challenge to herself (and to get it off her bucket list).

  Her zine will be called “Rebel, REBEL: A collective experience” and will focus on rebelling against the dominant paradigms of consumerism and patriarchy. She would like the zine to look at how there are a million different ways, large and small, that we all rebel. She would also like to make space to promote the idea that you don’t need to be completely radical in your lifestyle to be a rebel. Because often in small towns and northern climes doing anything radical or questioning marks you as othered.

  That’s where you come in!!! Laura would love it if you would submit a paragraph/essay/poem/photo/doodle/painting that talks about how you are a rebel…. It can be as simple as a series of sentences like “I am part of a group to raise awareness about recycling in my community”, “I use a diva cup”, “I go to my local farmer’s market”,”I attended a gay wedding”, “I compost”, “I knit my own underwear”, “I don’t buy Cosmo Magazines”, “I graffiti trains”, etc.

  She would love for you to be as creative as possible at thinking of ways that you challenge patriarchy/consumerism and a way to voice how you do this…. Please contact her (laura.burkholder@gmail.com) if you need ideas, or clarifications. With your submission please include a few simple details about yourself. She will not be posting people’s names with their submissions in an attempt to promote a collective voice, but would like to include a few details, along the lines of age, gender (or preferred pronoun), location, to promote the idea that you don’t have to be a certain demographic to be a rebel.

  Text(s) and images can be e-mailed to this laura.burkholder@gmail.com, and pictures can be scanned and e-mailed, or mailed to #101, Juniper Street, Prince George BC, V2L 1N5 (she promised to mail you back the originals).

  She is looking at trying to pull together all the submissions around February 1 2011, so she can begin to form the zine. Once it has been formed, she will mail you your very own copy! She will also be dispersing it at the 3rd Avenue Collective in Prince George, and other various locations around the city (and hopefully other cities) for public reading.
  

• • DIY

  Smash Patriarchy Embroidery Sampler!

  November 17, 2010 • Diandra Jurkic-Walls

  In the spirit of the oncoming holidays and perhaps the need to put together a present for someone that you really like when you have little or almost no cash, I put together this embroidery sampler! You should be able to root around your place for a sewing needle and a not-so-stained tea towel? Now scrounge up a dollar and head to a thrift store where you’ll find some embroidery floss and an embroidery hoop. The hard part is getting the transfer from the paper to your towel (without having to spend a wad of cash on transfer paper). You could use a pencil or a piece of chalk and lightly scribble a transfer layer on the back of the sampler, then place it ever-so-carefully on your tea towel (or whatever you choose to embroider on), using a pencil or renegade chopstick to trace the design.

  If you’ve never embroidered before, check out this Embroidery 101 tutorial from Instructables!, And, if by some Christmas Miracle you received some holiday gift money head to Sublime Stitching’s website for some fancy embroidery supplies (or hunt for a local craft shop).

  DOWNLOAD SAMPLER HERE (PDF).

• • All About Shameless
  • DIY
  • Event Listings

  Shameless at Canzine Sunday

  October 23, 2010 • Nicole Cohen

  On Sunday, Shameless will be at Canzine, Broken Pencil‘s annual zine fair and festival of alternative culture. Come say hello to our new editors and check out the awesome merch we’ll have on sale (cheap magazines!). Also, check out Editorial & Art Director Sheila Sampath’s reflections on Canzine.

  Sunday, Oct. 23
  The Great Hall, 1087 Queen Street West (Toronto)
  1-7 p.m.
  

• • DIY

  Fight Boredom!

  September 9, 2010 • Diandra Jurkic-Walls

  
  Hello Amber of the Fight Boredom Zine Distro is one of my ultimate Zine Heroes. Based out of Montreal, feminist Hello Amber!, runs this small zine distro and puts together the Fight Boredom Zine as well as a perzine, Culture Slut.

  Her distro is led by its inspiring Fight Boredom Manifesto:

  ONLY BORING PEOPLE GET BORED
  Or, The Fight Boredom Manifesto

  We will fight boredom with action, ideas and creativity. We will fight boredom with feminism, friend dates and crafternoons. We will fight jealousy and girl-hate and all the -isms and phobias in our communities. We will fight boredom by encouraging one another and maintaining positive friendships. We will fight the winter blues with long conversations, hot drinks and new adventures. We will have picnics in the springtime. We will fight boredom with bike rides, cupcakes, and trips to the library. We will write letters and we will not be afraid to cart our typewriters long distances. We will be critical of the mainstream. We will not be afraid to look ridiculous. When our acquaintances complain of boredom, we will do our best to help them fight it (or perhaps get drunk and remind them that only boring people get bored). We will fight boredom with our own zines and manifestos - WRITE YOUR OWN!

  Fight Boredom is currently building their distro up and is seeking zines for submission! Whether you’re a seasoned zine maker or even just thinking of making your first, Fight Boredom might just be the place for you! Acceptable material includes queer zines, feminist zines, tales of small towns, adventures, gardening, community-building, activism, cuntlove and tattoos. She’s also accepting zines in both English and French! If you’d like more information on how to submit a zine to this Distro check out Fight Boredom’s Myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/fight_boredom

  If you’ve never made a zine and are interested in putting one together there’s some online resources here:

  How to Make a Zine from Zine Book
  The Zine Library to upload your zine or print other people’s zines for distribution
  How to Make a Zine from Instructables
  The GRRRL Zine network has lots of great information on Feminsty resources as well as how to make a zine!

• • DIY
  • Food Fight

  The Great Candy Caper of 2010

  January 10, 2010 • Diandra Jurkic-Walls

  

  Candy Bags! (So You Think You're Crafty?)

  Recently my partner and I relocated to Vancouver Island from the wintery north to take a new-ish life: long growing seasons for gardening, future island hopping, and new jobs! Little did I know that by relocating from an amazing job where I felt I was actually making a difference in my community to a smaller island community meant that jobs are actually few and far between. In desperation to ensure I could pay my bills I’ve taken a job working in a call centre for an American cell phone company.

  While I do refer to this time in my life as “just another chapter in a forthcoming memoir” or “all great Canadian authors have worked a rather strange job once upon a time!” I still can’t get over the fact I’m not allowed to have food at my desk: except for hard candy. Then along came this tutorial! I have purchased pouches for dry snacks at craft fairs and have a pile of pouches I made before the holidays and use them often to house York Bites, Yoghurt Raisins, and Nibs (or even almonds if I didn’t work in a nut-free environment). This Candy Bag Tutorial by “So You Think You’re Crafty” is great and easy to follow (so many pictures, step by step instructions). It includes how-tos for both fabric lined pouches (for pre-wrapped candies) and vinyl-lined pouches for every other candy or dry snack you’d want to put in there. The fabric lined ones can usually be thrown in the washer and the vinyl just wiped out with a damp cloth.

  So if you do find yourself “working for the man” and really want to get your hands on some wildberry twizzlers at your desk, or even while studying Death of a Salesman in High School English, these pouches can hide your goodies and reduce plastic consumption!

• • Arts
  • DIY
  • Event Listings

  Parkdale Street Writers are back!

  October 5, 2009 • Megan Griffith-Greene

  We here at Shameless are big fans of the Parkdale Street Writers, a fantastic forum for youth writers (some of which we’ve been very lucky to reprint in the magazine). And a new set of workshops are about to begin. In addition to workshops with some amazing Toronto artists, participants get to try their hand at a wide range of creative writing, including comics, lyrics, poetry, video narratives and storytelling.

  Full deets from PSW co-ordinator Emily Pohl-Weary:

  Are you 16-25 years old? Do you keep a blog or journal? Constantly update your Facebook page? Write super-long e-mails? Make up stories, films, rants, video game ideas, lyrics and/or poems in your head? Love to read and talk about books?

  Why not join the…

  Parkdale Street Writers

  Free writing workshops led by kick-ass local authors, comics creators, hip hop poets and street artists in Toronto’s west-end.(more inside…)

• • DIY

  Sew-a-go-go

  August 24, 2009 • Diandra Jurkic-Walls

  

  Girls from the PG Roller Derby Brat Camp 2009 show off their shirts. (ohsweetie)

  This past weekend I got to participate in a teen girl roller derby camp that my place of employment, the YMCA, threw with a handful of other local agencies and businesses. One of the girls’ main projects was DIY-ing their camp t-shirts into derby dresses/shirts of wonder. They used lace, glitter, markers, and general deconstruction techniques to turn their men’s cut tees into the sassy piece they desired.

  The fun part was that even though a lot of the girls were crafty, a number of them had never hand sewn before. Even basic techniques like how much thread you need, threading a needle, and tying a knot. It was exciting to be able to teach these girls basic sewing skills and it even erupted into a bit of feministy conversation:

  Me: “Can you believe that once upon a time people argued that women were naturally inclined to do this [sew]?”

  Pink Ink: *groan*

  Zero: “Nuh, uh! They were forced to!”

  Basic sewing tutorials:

  Three techniques for basic hand sewing
  Securing a knot and tying off thread
  How to hem jeans in three easy steps.

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