May 2, 2011, 2:13 pm
Posted by: tally

Last week we announced that Desert Bus 5 will begin on November 18, 2011, and we know that many of you are already on the edge of your seats, wondering how you can get involved in the madness, like, right now. You’re in luck! For the creative, the artsy and craftsy, the make-nerdy-stuff-at-home inclined, we have a way for you to get involved right away, a full six months before the busing begins. You can participate in the Desert Bus 5 Craft-Along!

How? Allow us to demonstrate.

1) Read this ENTIRE post. Then email Tally at [email protected] to explain your craft idea and get her official approval.This is important so that we know what kind of items we’re expecting and can avoid too many of the same kinds of things. We also need to make sure that the idea fits within the guidelines of the Craft-Along which are (see below):

  • Items should be somehow centered around the themes of Desert Bus, video games, general geekery or Loading Ready Run, so they’ll be of interest to our viewers. That’s a huge pool to draw ideas from.
  • Items should be generally family friendly. They don’t all have to be appropriate for kids or anything, but no homemade Mario dildos, please.
  • Items should be of the best quality you can make them. We want your work, but we want your best work, in order to bring in the best donations for the children.
  • We will not be accepting portraits of the LRR crew this year. We’ve had a few of these (some very good ones, we must say) over the past years, and while we do love staring at ourselves for long hours in the mirror, we’re a little dubious that there are a ton of people out there who really really want our faces staring down at them from their living room walls. And if there are a ton of people out there who want this… we don’t really want to know about it.

2) Once you have received approval, make your item.

Probably best not to let your friends play with it, though.


3) Package your item carefully in an envelope or box, and then put it in a second envelope or box, to which you will affix the appropriate mailing information and postage. Please DO NOT SEAL the first (inner) box or envelope.
We’ll do that later, after we take pictures and coo over your awesome item, and before we mail it to its new owner.

This step is so that when we get your item we don’t have to hunt around for packaging materials. We pull it out of the first box, and use the second box to mail your item to its lucky auction winner. Efficiency!


4) Email Tally again ([email protected]) to inform her that your item is finished and to get the appropriate mailing address. Be sure to fill out the very important Crafter’s Form that Tally will also send you at this point. Then send it back to her.

We actually prefer that you email your answers back, even though paper airplanes are wicked awesome.

An important note: Please email Tally when your item is completed even if you already have the Moonbase’s mailing address. We’d like to be able to keep track of what mail we’re expecting and what items have, in fact, been completed. Also, we’ll need to send you that form.


5) Mail your item.


6) When November 2011 rolls around, tune in to the madness of Desert Bus 5…


7) … and die of shock* when your Craft-Along item auctions for more money than you paid for your car.**


*This is the one and only step we’d actually rather you didn’t follow.
**This is actually possible. Not necessarily likely, but possible.


8 ) The deadline for us to receive Craft-Along items is OCTOBER 15, 2011.
That’s the date by which they must have ARRIVED at Desert Bus headquarters. If your item isn’t here by that date, it risks being excluded from the Craft-Along. Late items are also guaranteed to cause Tally and Kathleen extra stress and possibly anger, and nobody wants that. (No, nobody does. Trust us.)

A quick recap of very important points:

  • Please do not begin crafting your item until you have communicated with Tally about it and gained her approval.
  • Remember to double package your item. This helps us out immeasurably.
  • When mailing your item, DO NOT list its value on the customs form as any higher than $60 CDN.
  • Remember to fill out the Crafter’s Form that Tally will email to you and email it back asap.
  • Mail your item early enough that it will arrive by October 15, 2011.


9) Have fun and get crafting!



 

18 Comments on “The Desert Bus 5 Craft-Along: how to participate”

  1. i wants that creepy doll puppet

    By Trymantha - May 2nd, 2011 2:24 pm
  2. What about art of iconic LLR sketch characters? For example, I was tossing around the idea of doing a stylized Jangles and Jones movie poster. Thanks so much!

    By Elisia - May 2nd, 2011 2:57 pm
  3. I love the fact that Rosco’s idea is approved and Jer’s isn’t. Also, we need to see Gibb more often.

    I love Desert Bus. Time to start brainstorming and planning!

    By Sarah - May 2nd, 2011 3:38 pm
  4. Elisia, character portraits are still something I’m happy to discuss. Email me about this and we can chat.

    By tally - May 2nd, 2011 3:50 pm
  5. Paul always plays the dead body.

    By Pat - May 2nd, 2011 6:12 pm
  6. I’m pretty sure the advice about not listing the items value over 60 is at least partially thanks to me. Sorry guys, I had no idea they would charge you anything. :(

    By Kiersen - May 2nd, 2011 8:07 pm
  7. Main problem with me is that I get good ideas, but then I realize it’s impossible to do in time, therefore disappointing the people I was doing it for. So if you do get any ideas from me, I apologize in advance since it will probably either be a common idea or come in EXTREMELY close to the deadline. But mark my words, if I say I’ll do something, I will do it with 500% effort!

    By RLYoshi - May 3rd, 2011 9:53 am
  8. Argh, I haven’t gotten any good ideas yet! Not quite sure what I’d have the time/patience for…

    By Juliamon - May 3rd, 2011 10:28 pm
  9. is it worth asking people to send a photo of the item, so we know what we’re bidding for. If it’s double packed I’d guess that there would be no way of photographing the items when they get to you. It’s nice to be able to see what’s on auction, rather than relying on description, which may give the wrong impression.

    By Alex Mason - May 9th, 2011 4:12 am
  10. Actually Alex, as each item arrives we open it up, photograph it and post several photos of the item with its auction listing. You can see last year’s examples of this very thing here:
    http://desertbus.org/silent-auctions/

    and here:
    http://desertbus.org/live-auctions/

    I am all about the visual – I agree that it would be rather silly to ask people to bid on crafted items (or most things, really) without seeing them at all.

    By tally - May 10th, 2011 4:54 pm
  11. Tally and crew took GREAT pictures of the Craft-A-Long itmes last year. It’s really hard to photograph glass and they made mine look spectacular!

    By Helen - May 11th, 2011 4:32 am
  12. so what’s the point of putting it in two packages if you’re going to open both? Unless of course you want people to not seal the first package, which it might be worth saying, just in case someone gets a little confused and ends up sealing the first package, meaning it’s harder to reuse it after you’ve opened it.

    By Alex Mason - May 13th, 2011 4:45 am
  13. Oops, I totally left out the bit about not sealing the first package! Thanks for catching that, Alex – I’ll add it in.

    By tally - May 14th, 2011 12:05 pm
  14. So how long should it take to get a response? Not rushing you guys or anything, I just wanna make sure nothing went wrong or the message didn’t send or something. O:

    By Kelsey - May 18th, 2011 1:47 pm
  15. I still have more Triforces!
    I do have to say, I was very mad at myself when I missed Desert Bus last year. Though the real kicker was the seeing how well they sold then receiving a signed thank you card.
    So despite the many man-hours it took to make those, and the $70 dollars to ship them, it was worth it.
    DHos

    By DHos - May 19th, 2011 5:23 am
  16. […] awesome webcomic, Penny Arcade also runs an awesome charity, which I’ll be raising money for by crafting this […]

    By SDCC Sketch Doll: Gabe « Sew By Numbers - July 6th, 2011 2:22 pm
  17. Paul do some planking! Wohooo..

    By la little bum - September 19th, 2011 5:22 pm
  18. Step 7 Part 2 definitely happened. I’m highly suspecting Part 1 nearly did.

    By Admiral Memo - November 25th, 2011 7:36 am
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