Australian Craft Magazines Archive: Australian Handmade Magazine Summary List of Issues and Issues 1 to 6 Explored

This blog is created to be an archive of my collection of craft magazines. I have an enormous collection of Australian craft magazines built up over a long time and I wanted to find a way to archive them for future reference.

Handmade 1 Winter 1984

In this first post I will start with Handmade Magazine. As at this week (12 June 2016), there have been 304 issues published of Handmade magazine. Because of issue numbering changes over time, I will refer to the actual number in publication order of the magazine from its start throughout my comments, but will also refer to the actual naming used on the cover at times, for example, the first issue was called Winter 1984.
The magazine started in 1984 with Winter 1984 and was published by Magazine Promotions Australia. Initially, the magazine was published quarterly until 1986, when they started having 5 issues a year.
In 1987, it became a bi-monthly publication. and then in January 1988 with the 20th magazine published, the magazine was purchased by Australian Consolidated Press under its Women's Weekly banner. Handmade Magazine became initially a biannual publication, then in 1990 became quarterly.
Up to the start of 1992 the magazines were all referred to as a season in the title, but starting with Summer 1992, they commenced adding a volume and issue number, starting with Volume 8, issue 4. These volume and issue numbers don't seem to match with the actual dates issued of the magazine but they do tally with the age roughly, that is, in 1992 it was 8 years later than 1984 which was the year of the first publication.
Handmade Magazine became bi-monthly in Jan-Feb 1994 with volume 10 issue 1 which is also the 40th magazine published.
The magazine continued at ACP until number 71, volume 15 number 2 in Mar-Apr 1999, when it was purchased by Express Publications, who are the current owners of the magazine. In this year, Express published 7 magazines per year.
From Volume 16 Issue 1 (Jan-Feb 2000, number 77), the magazine becomes 12 issues per year. Sometimes these 12 issues do not match up with a date but rather a theme eg Christmas. The dates completely disappear from the titles commencing at Volume 18 Issue 6 (no. 106).
I have attached a 3 page summary document to detail the issues. For the eagle eyed reader m you may notice that there are a few numbers missing from my list - numbers 14,66 and embarrassingly 303. These are issues I have not been able to track down yet or accidentally missed when out.
Because this list is for my benefit, I have also marked some of the later issues with a note about having one of my projects appear in the issue. I have to date had 19 projects published in Handmade Magazine, and I am personally very proud of this because its nice when your efforts as an artist are appreciated by others.

I will progressively add information about individual issues over time and I start now with numbers 1 to 6. These notes are really my summary of basic content plus individual things that are of interest to me.