Calling all craftsy, artistic and creatively inclined people: the Desert Bus 2010 Craft-Along is here! Desert Bus 2010 starts November 19, 2010, and it’s time to start preparing.
That’s right, in this blog post you’ll find Craft-Along guidelines, contact information and even an instructional video from the Desert Bus cat-girls themselves. Can you handle it?
Here is how you can participate, in three easy steps!
1) Make your craft. Please email [email protected] to let us know what you’re making though. If you have any questions or concerns about what to make, the appropriateness of a particular craft or idea, or anything else you wish to discuss with us, we’d be happy to discuss it with you. We’ll also provide you the address you can send your craft to when it’s done!
2) Ship your craft in recursive packaging. We want to minimize the time we have to spend packaging and shipping prizes, in order to maximize the time we can spend on camera during Desert Bus, entertaining you with silly songs and crazy dances. To this end, we ask that you double wrap your stuff before shipping it to us. For example, put your craft in an unaddressed, unsealed envelope. Then put that envelope into a larger envelope on which you will write our address and your return address. Then ship it. Or, put your craft in a box that has plenty of blank space for us to write on, then wrap the box up in paper and write our address on that. This way, all we have to do is remove the outer layer of packaging, address the inner packaging to the auction winner and ship it. Then we can get right back to the business of making you laugh at our outrageous antics.
3) Once you have shipped your item, go home and send us another email. In this email please include:
- Your full name (If you would like your craft to be credited to a nickname or forum name instead, please notify us of this in your email.)
- Your full mailing address
- What your item is
- If you have one, the url for your website, Etsy store, Deviant Art page, or anywhere else you post photos and examples of your work. We will include this link on www.desertbus.org so that people can see more of your amazing work.
Send this email to [email protected]
DEADLINE: Your Craft-Along item must be received by us no later than NOVEMBER 1, 2010 in order to be included in the Craft-Along. We strongly recommend that you mail your item several weeks ahead of time, in case of delays or general post office screw-ups. Stuff happens.
Points of Interest:
The Craft-Along will function a little bit differently this year. All but a few Craft-Along items (selected by intensive review and several committees – which really means selected by the illustrious Rosco P. Jangles IV, possessor of Canard Knowledge) will be displayed in silent online auctions over the course of Desert Bus.
All Craft-Along items, along with all other Desert Bus prizes and auction items, will appear on www.desertbus.org a couple weeks before the start of Desert Bus, for your perusal and to build drooling anticipation.
With Gratitude:
We’d like to say a special thank you to all the wonderful LoadingReadyRun fans and forumites who, entirely of their own volition, began the wonderful Craft-Along tradition last year. You guys are awesome! We absolutely cannot wait to see what amazing arts and crafts you will come up with this year!
That’s everything – now go get crafting!
[…] Today, we’re announcing Desert Bus 2010 craft-along news over at LoadingReadyRun.com. This is a chance for crafters and artists to donate their original work to Desert Bus to raise even more money. Check out the details (and a silly video) here. […]
Pingback by quick & easy cat ears – a Desert Bus tribute | I Could Make That — May 14, 2010 @ 4:36 pm
Wow good it was made so bad on purpose ;D
Comment by Victuz — May 14, 2010 @ 5:03 pm
Very interesting. I may participate, but I have a question. Do the crafts need to be desert bus, or childrens, related? Or could I make anything?
Also, just a curiousity: who pays when you ship it off to the winners? Does that money come out of the auction price? Or does LRR spend their own hard earned money raising money for da childrends?
Comment by Bluebottle — May 14, 2010 @ 5:24 pm
I’m not exactly fantastic at crafts, but arts I’m fairly decent at, I’m wondering what’s the policy on creating posters for the event?
Also, what’s the policy on maybe sending the image via Email? I realise it’d be a bigger pain in the arse to get it printed and then packaged, but some of us are incredibly poor (due to being lazy-bastard artists) and it could prove to be the only option for hope of hitting the deadline.
Also I ask because I’m not sure about where the hell I can get hold of poster tubes in my town…
– Archemetis.
Comment by Archemetis — May 14, 2010 @ 5:38 pm
Good question, Bluebottle – someone else emailed me w/ the same inquiry, and here’s what I told him:
Craft-along items do not have to be specifically Desert Bus or LRR themed. They certainly can be, but it’s not a requirement. The idea is simply to make something that will appeal to our viewers (so chiefly the general gaming and geek community), so that people will want to bid on it thereby raising big money for the children. A good guideline is simply to make something that you yourself might want to own and to bid on for charity.
As to your other question, no. Shipping costs have not come out of the auction price in the past, and I am not aware of any plan to change that this year. LRR foots the bill for shipping (so you providing the packaging will help us out in that regard as well), though last year Penny Arcade very generously assisted us with shipping costs as we received an unexpectedly (but also awesomely) high number of auction items.
Comment by Tally — May 14, 2010 @ 6:06 pm
Archemetis, email me at [email protected] so we can discuss possibilities. This sort of thing we’ll work out on a case by case basis. Thanks!
Comment by Tally — May 14, 2010 @ 6:07 pm
I assume 5 ton solid marble statues will be perfectly suitable crafts.
Comment by Reid A — May 14, 2010 @ 6:24 pm
@reid A:
As long as all you send us is a photograph and description, and ship the item to it’s buyer yourelf, be our guest.
Comment by Matt — May 14, 2010 @ 6:32 pm
Funny that someone joked about marble sculpture because I’m thinking of making a small marble bust of Toast of “The Secret Life of” fame. Unfortunately, I’m having trouble getting good reference pics.
Comment by Nathan — May 14, 2010 @ 8:30 pm
I’m so doing this! Maybe this year I won’t fail miserably at shipping. So the deadline is November 1st. If we take pictures and email it when we say we shipped, does that mean POSTMARKED on 11/01/10, or recieved?
So another question: you want everything that is auctioned off separately in its own envelope of box, but then do you want EVERYTHING in one box to ship to you?
I am setting myself a goal now. I have a box from ThinkGeek that’s about 4 cubic feet. I intend on making enough stuff that I will only need one pillow pack from them to keep it safe. I’ll be doing bookbinding again, but I think I may make more wands, perhaps some drawings, and maybe even some crocheted stuff. I’ll make the plans up tomorrow.
Comment by Tim K — May 14, 2010 @ 10:02 pm
It must be received, here in Victoria, in our hands by November 1.
Comment by Tally — May 14, 2010 @ 10:10 pm
Well, I’ll send an email to this effect later this weekend, but I’m hoping to have, in addition to the DB3 memorial poster I started last year, more original and lrr related art to be auctioned off during the DB4 shenanigans. I should have time to work on (and finish) the DB3 memorial poster once I touch down from my coastal leap of LA to NY next month, so expect to see that first. Other stuff I haven’t quite figured out yet, but I will, and it will be awesome!
Comment by epocalypse — May 15, 2010 @ 12:32 am
Now to produce something good enough that someone would want. But not something so amazing I want to keep it for myself…
I wonder if there’s an interest in Contact Lense caspuel sculpture…
Comment by Merrymaker_Mortalis — May 15, 2010 @ 10:02 am
@tak (tim k)
Your idea sounds good, but a couple of points:
1) Sending a lot of stuff sounds good, but if you’re going to make a whole lot of stuff, each set of items that you’re sending us off to auction must be packed individually
– say you make 5 wands, and 5 scarves, and each wand and scarf is a pair that is supposed to be auctioned off making a total of five lots
– each LOT must packed individually – ie, five boxes inside a big box, not one big box filed with stuff
2) Scarcity creates demand. You will get more money for an item if there is only one of it, rather than if there are five of it. So rather than making five smaller prizes, make one really nice prize. It will get more money and cost us (and you) less
Comment by Kathleen — May 15, 2010 @ 1:09 pm
[…] a fan of, Desert Bus, is doing a Craft-Along in preparation for their event in late November. Check here to find out more, including how to mail your crafts in. So that’s […]
Pingback by All Sorts of Random Stuff. « Out of Phase — May 16, 2010 @ 5:39 pm