Category: General

Oh dear.

Oh dear, dear, dear.

This has not been the ideal first part of Mini-Zine March.

Hello, wonderful zine friends. After two weeks with no Happy Mail Monday, few posts, and not much else, you’re probably wondering what’s happening. (If you don’t follow me on other social media, anyway.)

Here’s a little explainer:

On March 4th, I had a day procedure at the hospital. I’ve had this procedure before, so I expected a day or two of rest to recover, and then things would be right back to normal. Unfortunately, this time has been complicated, creating a need for a lot of rest. (I think I’ve been sleeping more than I’ve been awake this month.)

The good news is that I’m really lucky to have great doctors in my life who really listen to me, so I am recovering. It’s just taken a lot longer than expected.

The other good news is that things should be back to normal now as far as posting goes. One good thing about being stuck in a chair for most of the day is that, when I am awake, I have zines to read and review. 🙂

So here’s to health and getting Mini-Zine March going properly!

Hello, beautiful, wonderful zine friends! And welcome to new friends from Festival of the Photocopier as well as from the The Slubberdegullion Show on 4zzz in Brisbane!

Wanderer and I are back home safe and sound (not for lack of a few trying! look before you switch lanes is all I care to say…), and we are slowly catching up with everything that happened while we were away.

Away at… FESTIVAL OF THE PHOTOCOPIER!

Festival of the Photocopier was amazing! And it was only possible for me to go thanks to the generosity of amazing zine friends. I really can’t thank you all enough.

There will definitely be videos to come of the event, but I’m still run a bit ragged after all the travel and only managed to get this far with my unpacking and reorganising of zine stock…

I do have some photos to share with you, however, should you care to have a peek and don’t want to wait until I get into video mode. I’ll stick them after the more tag.

Show lots of love to all the gorgeous Sticky Institute (Twitter)(Facebook) volunteers who are very likely still in need of lots of sleep after all the hard work.

Now for some photos!

Continue reading “That After Festival of the Photocopier Glow”

I think it was a few years ago when I joked about ‘forever cutting cupcakes’ in preparation for Festival of the Photocopier 2016. Back then I only had a couple Don’t Call Me Cupcake issues and a few Dear Anonymous zine.

I had no idea what a lot of cupcakes was. Haha.

Hello, zine friends!

Usually today would be the day for a Happy Mail Monday video, but today you have this post. Festival of the Photocopier is approaching, and I have been busy working away. What used to be a small job – five to ten copies of each zine, twenty of more popular ones – has become a big job with over forty zines to my name.

That’s not to brag, of course. But with more zines than not needing handsewn binding (love ya staples, but I’ll never stop sewing!), it’s taking me a while to finish everything up.

Honestly, my anxiety is rising as well. I’m doing much better than I did at this point a few years ago while prepping at Festival of the Photocopier 2016, but it’s still an energy suck nonetheless. One that I need to accept, give myself time for, and understand.

That said, I know the zine fest will be amazing. I’m so excited to see so many zines, meet people, and be around so much zine goodness!

I hope you’ll bear with me as the schedule needs to be adjusted while I try to prepare to make the most out of the zine fest. <3

Until next time.

Hello, zine friends!

I intended to write this post much earlier in the month, but – as you may know – 2019 came out swinging.

Wanderer ended up for a short stay in hospital. He’s feeling back to normal now, thank goodness, but the days were stressful, as he dislikes hospitals at the best of times and was a bit of a medical mystery to the doctor. Financial stresses keep piling up, any my own medical issues are proving annoying as they butt into my focus while I’m trying to focus on other things.

However, I will leave all the negativity here and now. As I’m typing this. I have stressed, cried, wondered how it could all possibly work… and now it’s time to let go. Oh, the things are still there, but there’s a difference between dealing with the stressful things and focusing on them to the point where you feel like they will consume you.

When I watched Feral Publication’s video, I felt inspired to put my focus on the positives. To the things I’m working toward. And to put those things ‘out there’ into the zineverse rather than containing them strictly within my head.

Here are my goals for this year:

*Finish all zine projects still ‘open’ from 2018
*Make at least five zines
*Submit to at least ten collab zines
*Go to Festival of the Photocopier
*Open the Sea Green Zine Distro
*Read at least one book a month (I read heaps of zines but would like to read more books)
*Finish the first draft of my next story (not sure if it’s novel-length just yet)

There’s certainly a lot more that I’d like to accomplish this year, but I want my goals to be distinct from all the various things things on my to-do list. They are also ‘SMART’ – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely.

I’ll stop my ramble here, friends, as I’ve wandered a bit more in the writing of this post than I thought I would. Haha.

I wish you all the best in the year to come – whether you made your goals on New Year’s Eve, haven’t made them yet, or would rather not make goals. Should you be stressed or overwhelmed, I hope the universe provides you with everything you need to take it in stride.

Best wishes always.

Happiest of New Years to you, dear and wonderful zine friends!

I hope your New Years Eve and New Years has treated you very, very well and that, if you indulged, you’re still feeling okay today. ^_^

I spent the evening at home (surprise, surprise) but had a lovely time. Wanderer rang a really loud bell at precisely 5pm to remind me to stop working. Haha. We enjoyed good food and good company. Sometimes having a chill time at home is the best time. (But perhaps going out to see the fireworks next year.)

Today I have felt pumped about the start of a fresh year, like I usually do. This year already has some unavoidable low spots in place, but I’m still feeling very positive about it all. (Though that could be because I had the spoons for a nice walk and a nice long shower this morning. 🙂 )

I’m very, very happy to have accomplished the final stages of this today:

My new zine storage system! Oh, my gosh. I have had those boxes ready to be folded into shape for – gosh – six months? And I finally got to doing it a few days ago. It took a long time because of a bit of extra taping and cutting needed to get the boxes just the way I wanted them for zine storage. These should last me quite a long time (though I may have to separate out more popular letters to individual boxes like S-T).

This is the space above the shelves in the background of nearly all my videos. I usually have a weird assembly of bits and bobs up there, so it’s nice to have it be an actual dedicated space for something.

The one annoyance is that I ran out of boxes. I have the alphabetical organising for one-offs and zines like that, but I like having boxes for individual zinemakers as well. That way I can keep all their zine awesomeness together in one place. I did have quite a few boxes, but I still fell short. (So if you don’t see your name and we trade a lot – that’s why!) I’ll be saving up to get more boxes in the future.

There’s a lot to look forward to for Sea Green Zines in 2019, but I think I’ve prattled along quite enough in this post. Haha. I’ll be back soon with a post focused on what direction I’ll be steering SGZ in this year and a few fun things coming up.

Until next time…