The cover of ReadyMade magazine’s 100 Project Manual, print-on-demand issue

Readers of ReadyMade magazine were busy last fall submitting their DIY projects for the 100 contest in one of these categories: Home & Garden, Food & Entertaining, Design, Craft, Fashion & Style, Culture, Travel & Places, and Technology & Work. Judging started in mid-December, and the top 25 were given generous coverage in the magazine’s April/May issue, with prototyping and photography help from its indefatigable staff. The cover of the issue featured the overall winner, the Literary Lamp by Tess Wolfe Stelzer from Seattle, who says, “I work in a hematopathology lab by day and make arts and crafts by night. I have my late grandmother’s contempt for waste, so I make every effort to repurpose, reuse, and recycle.”

Literary Lamp by Tess Wolfe Stelzer

Tess makes these lamp stands from recycled books, folding the pages to create the geometric forms. You can see her explaining her methods on a Seattle TV show. Andrew Wagner, the Editor of the magazine, was faced with the problem of how to best celebrate the full 100 chosen entries, saying in his blog, “We wanted to see all 100 projects grouped together as they should be: frolicking freely across printed pages, mingling side by side, enjoying one another’s company, and bringing joy to all our readers as sometimes only the printed word can do.” The answer to the dilemma was the Espresso Book Machine.

The Espresso Book Machine

The machine may look like a conventional printer-copier being gobbled up by a DIY robot, but it turns out to be capable of printing almost any book in black and white at a surprisingly competitive price. ReadyMade’s 100 Project Manual is available for $10 if you swing by the printing location to pick it up, or $15 with shipping and handling to your destination of choice. For those who enjoy reading on paper and the tangibility of a book or magazine, this seems like an attractive option for the future.

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