I Heart Monopoly, part two

The reason I love Monopoly right now is that it is a goldmine of raw materials for the crafter. As I mentioned in my previous post, Monopoly has always sold in huge quantities, right from the word Go (sorry for the pun!), meaning that even the older editions are around in fairly large numbers, and are fairly cheap to Boot. (Sorry. I just can't help myself today).

At the moment I am really into making books, so you can guess how most of the Monopoly boards go when I get my grubby little paws on them! Right now I prefer to wire bind. I don't think coptic binding suits Monopoly, somehow. I love the little charms that I've been adding to the books, as well. Right now I have one on my purse as well.

The box is surprisingly good for book making as well. This particular book was made from a set someone had given in to a charity shop minus the board. I do wonder about some people. How saleable did they think a game without the board would be? It's sheer luck that the charity shop had someone to take it off their hands; otherwise, they would have had to pay to dispose of it, something the giver could have done for free through their household waste collection. I did wonder if it was another crafter, but one with any imagination at all could have made a lot more use of the rest of it... oh well, rant over. I always feel that books made from the box have far more of a vintage feel, which is why I've teamed this one with vintage tokens. They are also slightly more lightweight. I usually market my books as journal/notebook, but really there is a big distinction in my mind. A book made from the covers feels like a hefty journal, one made from the covers feels far more like a notebook.

Both of the books pictured are available to buy at my Dawanda shop. I'm not finished with Monopoly yet, and there will be more ways to use the different parts soon...

I Heart Monopoly, part one

I love Monopoly. I really love to play it, but I don't think I'm too good at it. I can beat the computer most times, but my other half usually beats me when we play. I like to think this means that my partner is some kind of business genius, or at least some kind of board game genius. Unfortunately I think it probably just means that the artificial intelligence they use for the computer versions is a little ropey.

One of the things I love about Monopoly is that nearly everybody thinks they know how to play it, but in my experience, hardly anybody does. All kinds of 'house rules' are assumed to be official. For example, a player does not have to do one full circuit of the board before buying properties. If they land on a property and choose not to buy it, it must be auctioned to the highest bidder, even if the highest bid is only £1. If you land on Go you don't get double pay; if you land on Free Parking you don't get 'the pot' of fines, because the money should go straight to the bank. If you run out of houses, there are no more houses; you can't just substitute paper tokens or whatever. But if the bank runs out of money, then it is duty-bound to produce more, and to hell with the threat of hyperinflation. So even before you play, you enter a set of protracted negotiations as to whose rules you will play by. If you are particularly argumentative this can be almost as drawn out - and fun - as the game itself.

I adore the fact that there are so many different versions of it, and have done since I was small. The way that the names and places change but the game and even the currency stay the same. We rarely travelled as a family, but my father went abroad for work often and I would beg him to bring back foreign editions, although he never did. Huge nations are treated the same way as small-ish cities in Monopoly editions; much loved institutions get their own versions, but so do companies that only a shareholder could love (who else could possibly want the Thomas Cook Monopoly that is currently for sale on Ebay?) But then I must confess that Pentonville Road, Vine Street and Fenchurch Street Station mean as little to me as Hafenstrasse, Rue de Belleville and Marvin Gardens. I am on the desperate look-out to find a reasonably priced version for Coventry, where I at least know the different places.

At the moment what I love most is that Monopoly is a crafter's dream. I see it second-hand regularly, usually the standard UK version. I have learnt to recognise the subtle changes over time, and I have a huge collection of 'spares' from the war time cardboard tokens to an entire town full of houses. (Monopoly has always sold in such huge quantities that even the old sets aren't worth much, although that doesn't stop people on Ebay trying for silly money every now and then.) Frequently I donate pieces to the charity shops I deal with so they can sell a set complete, but just as often I end up buying it and taking it home to craft with.

They call me the Womble...

...and I can think of worse nicknames! If I had to be a Womble, I'd choose Bungo.

I probably ought to explain who the Wombles are for the benefit of any non-Brits reading this. I'm not sure if the rest of the world has them! The Wombles were a fictional band of... wombles, I guess, who have featured in TV series, books and novelty songs on and off since the 1970s. They live on Wimbledon Common in London, litter-picking. They were eco-pioneers and early advocates of the upcycling movement:

"Making good use of the things that we find
Things that the everyday folks leave behind"

If you are British (or the rest of the world has Wombles after all) you are no doubt cursing me now, knowing that the theme tune will now go round and round your head for at least the rest of the week. It came as a huge shock to me when I discovered that there were only about sixty episodes ever made; I swear it must have been on TV at least once a day throughout my youth. Wombles are a part of our culture, our shared history and our common currency.

Which is why I don't understand why upcycling is still seen as so eccentric, why otherwise logical people become suddenly squeamish when you suggest that rubbish can ever become anything beautiful, or useful. Recycling is fine, because all you really have to do is dump your rubbish in a different bin and it - and the problem - magically disappears. It seems that generations of us have 'owned' the Wombles without ever really considering their whole point. Just as we happily remind one another that "one man's trash is another man's treasure" as we list items on Ebay or pack them off to the charity shop, feeling slightly smug that we can afford to consider it the former.

Mind you, it seems that the Wombles are pretty cool at the moment.  Like all Ivor Wood TV programmes - all good kids' programmes full stop - it feels slightly hallucinogenic and is easy to enjoy in an kitschy, ironic way. (As if to reinforce the trippiness, the Wombles' favourite food is mushrooms. Yikes.)  In fact, they're even playing Glastonbury this year! Maybe their message is beginning to get through after all...

What Reloved by Rosie is all about

I work with local businesses to reduce their waste by salvaging and crafting with items that wouldotherwise go to landfill. I turn them into items that are useful, quirky, cute and fun! I also work with some of the charity shops that benefit my local community. Sometimes I am able to restore goods to saleable condition for them, by providing missing game counters or rules, for example, or by changing old buttons for new. I also pay to salvage unsellable items that they would otherwise have to dispose of. And of course I donate items I have made to sell in their shops. My mission is to create the loved from the unloved and highlight how much unnecessary waste we produce. By buying from me you not only get a gorgeous item, you help to save the world :)