For the past year, Hip Check has stepped up to offer its humble opinion about the latest, greatest things worthy of your wallet. There have been prescriptionless glasses, precariously high heels, bizarre concert swag, fun books, and designer duds, to name a few deserving expenditures.

Now, in its final chapter, Hip Check has one last piece of advice: stop spending so much money! But before you do that, shell out a mere $4.95 for a sleek new magazine that’ll teach you how to take matters into your own hands so you can stop dropping the big bucks for store-bought crap.

Meet ReadyMade (http://www.readymademag.com/),the genius creation of Shoshana Berger and Grace Hawthorne, two thirtysomething ladies in Berkeley, California. Available at Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Urban Outfitters, the quarterly color magazine, which has recently been graced with Dave Eggers’s design (he’s an old friend of Berger’s), offers instruction, stories, and lavish spreads on how to make something out of loot otherwise destined for the trash heap.

Recent stories have included instructions on how to turn your old PC into a coffee table, how to make planters out of shower curtains, and ways to devise clocks from crushed Sunkist cans. "We like people to think of themselves as mad scientists, as inventors in their own homes," explains Berger, speaking from the magazine’s headquarters, which are littered with experiments in progress. "A lot of people are stuck in very drone-y jobs and, you know, are looking for a creative outlook and would like to work with their hands."

Both founders draw upon their past lives as "furniture rescuers" in their new capacity as beacons of creative inspiration. "The idea is to perpetuate the creative process," says publisher Hawthorne, explaining that her favorite recent adventure in DIY-land was turning an old end table into a chessboard.

ReadyMade, which currently has a circulation of 50,000 and counts Alabama (!) as its strongest-support-base state, borrowed its name from the forefather of reuse, Marcel Duchamp, who was "the original inverter of everyday objects," says Berger. "It’s about adaptive reuse, taking byproducts of our culture and rethinking them and turning them into art." To that end, with a visit to your local hardware or plumbing-supply store, say, Economy Plumbing Supply or Ace Plumbing Supply — and a moment to ponder turning a plumbing pipe into a curtain rod (it can be done!) — you may be able to fashion more creative, cheaper housewares.

So Bed Bath & Beyond, be gone! With this magazine — and a trusted relationship with your corner hardware store — you’ll have all the tools you need to do it yourself, on the cheap.

And that’s the best advice we’ll ever be able to provide.

Nina Willdorf can be reached at ninawilldorf@earthlink.net.

Where to find it:

• Ace Plumbing Supply, 1180 Mass Ave, Dorchester, (617) 436-0213.

• Barnes & Noble, various locations, www.bn.com.

• Borders, various locations, www.bordersstores.com.

• Economy Plumbing Supply, 3190 Washington Street, Jamaica Plain, (617) 522-3222.

• Urban Outfitters, 361 Newbury Street, (617) 236-0088; 11 JFK Street, Cambridge, (617) 864-0070.