Welcome to MAKE / DO,
a scrappy little newsletter about living creatively, consuming thoughtfully, acting boldly, and generally making do, at home and elsewhere. This is a quiet place on a loud internet where creativity, resourcefulness, and thrift come to play. Here, we celebrate slowing down, making things ourselves, and seeking delight wherever it can be found.
Recurring MAKE / DO features include:
Personal Essays and Projects
Regular pieces about whatever’s niggling at me, whatever I’m currently grappling with, whatever I think needs saying, sharing, or gawking over.
Recent Observations
Think of it like taking a walk together, or staring out the window. It’s not all poetry, but it could be.
A Few Small Things
A monthly round-up of a few small things that are serving a purpose, scratching an itch, offering some relief, solving a problem, or bringing some joy.
My Week in Objects
A weekly round up of single-object photographs, mostly closeup and an accompanying list of links to thoughtful writing, interesting events, promising initiatives and other things might intrigue or delight.
More about me:
Make / Do is written by me, Erin Boyle. I’m a writer and creative working at the intersection of sustainability, consumerism, and creativity. Make / Do, originally called Tea Notes, began as an extended universe of my original blog, Reading My Tea Leaves, which I started in 2009. If you’d like, you can still visit Reading My Tea Leaves to explore the entire 14-year archive.
My newest book, MAKING THINGS: Finding Use, Satisfaction, and Meaning in Crafting Everyday Objects was co-written and photographed with Rose Pearlman and published by Hardie Grant in 2024. It’s a big book filled with accessible projects to make yourself. More than being just a craft book, it’s an invitation to a kind of wholesale reimagining of our relationships to objects and materials and our ability to make and manipulate them—and the meaning we can derive from that practice.
My first book, SIMPLE MATTERS: Living With Less and Ending Up With More, was published by Abrams in 2016, it’s about living simply, slowing down and curbing the tide of relentless consumerism.
I live in New York City with my husband James and our three children.
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