Category: Zinewrimo

Hello, hello! It’s a week and a day until the end of November, and today’s ZineWriMo task is:

Make a Wordless Zine

Now it’s time for a confession.

I got caught up in making Don’t Call Me Cupcake 9.5 and completely lost track of time. The annoying things is that I’m so close but not finished yet. So I’m afraid I don’t have a wordless zine. (Trust me, you don’t want to see my attempts at art anyway.)

Instead, I offer you Plague. I reviewed this ages ago, but it’s the zine/comic that came to mind when I thought of ‘wordless’. It’s grim, dark, and oh, so good.

Despite not having the wordless minizine, I will have a zine review coming very soon.

Hello, zine friends! A bit of a late post for me today, but that’s because today’s prompt is to work on zines in progress, and I have been working hard all day! It feels good to make progress on these zines after feeling creatively blocked for quite a while.

Checking back in with my goals:

*Complete ZineWriMo – don’t miss any days
*Complete all ZineWriMo mini-zines
*Complete mini-zines: Little Reminders 2, Little Reminders 3
*Complete all writing for Don’t Call Me Cupcake 9

Bonus round:

*Complete Dear Anonymous 7
*Complete Don’t Call Me Cupcake 9 (just the proof copy to take care of)
*Complete Don’t Call Me Cupcake 9.5 (in progress – nearly there)

I also finished up Missives From Murray Bridge 3! I wanted to finish Don’t Call Me Cupcake 9.5 today, but I didn’t quite get through all the bits and pieces.

How’d you go with things today? Did you get into any zine goodness? Let me know in the comments.

Hello, zine friends! Anyone want some warmth because there’s this place in South Australia that is getting pretty toasty…

Kidding. Here we are in the third week of November, usually the home of the third week slump, third week drag – whatever you want to call it. This is the time when it’s hard to keep focused and keep going. That’s why we have daily prompts to keep us going when we don’t want to have to think about stuff. 😉

Today’s task is to share your favourite zine tools. Now I love my needle and thread for binding, and I love my bone folder for nice, solid folding, but my favourite tool that I don’t get to use enough is…

The Japanese screw punch!

This little lovely is the superhero version of your standard hole punch. Where you can’t punch things like chipboard with a standard hole punch, you can with this. It comes with various sizes of ‘bits’ to put in it to create different sized holes.

But why talk about it when you can watch two short videos I made just under a year ago?

Here are part one and part two of me explaining the punch and how it works.

That’s me for today, zine friends. Let me know about your favourite zine making tools and how you’re doing this wonderful ZineWriMo.

Hello, zine friends, and happy start to the coming week (if Monday is your Monday, which it’s likely not, so I don’t know where to end this mid-sentence sidenote…). Today for ZineWriMo, we have the challenge of trying out a new genre.

Genres in zinedom are a little looser, a little less defined than in the literary world – but that’s what makes it fun, right? In general, though, there are a few (listed in no particular order):

*Your usual literary genres for fiction writing: fantasy, sci-fi, etc
*Poetry zine
*Comic
*Collab zines – zines containing pieces from multiple people
*Info/Educational zines
*Perzine – a personal, memoir or biography style zine
*Fanzine – a zine all about that thing/person/band/movie/game/etc you love
*Politizine – a politically oriented zine
*Music Scene Zine

So on and so forth. There are heaps of different takes, mixing and matching, and the like.

I was a bit stumped for this one for a while. I make a perzine, and collab zine, and have made info zines. Poetry, any sort of artistry, politics, and music all fall under this hazy veil for me, so I didn’t know what to make that was outside familiar territory.

Then it occurred to me…

Fanzine! I’ve never made a fanzine before, and I just so happened to make the cover for this one just yesterday. Haha. Go figure.

I’m a planner, so I’ve been scribbling down various notes and things for how I want to structure my fanzine and what information I would like to include in it. I’m very excited all over again to tear apart and examine a show I really love.

How did you go with today’s task? Did you try a new genre? Let me know about it in the comments!

Hello, zine friends! I hope you are having a lovely weekend. It’s turned out to be a little bit toasty in my world bubble, but after a lot of rain, I am happy to have it.

Alas, I just couldn’t summon the energy to put together a ‘make a zine’ kit last night. Not when my office was ‘in transition’…

It’s slightly less messy today, and I actually have my computer set back up, but I am typing this with my back to all the mess. Haha. The way I had things just wasn’t working, so what’s a person to do other than rearrange the furniture?

I did get back on the ZineWriMo track today.

Yay! A little kit with stickers, washi tape, die cuts, a mini-zine blank, and my mini-zine about zines: What’s All This Then? Ideally I’d like to put a small pencil or sharpie in there as well, but if I’m going to mail this, that makes it immediately more complicated (aka expensive). But I think this could be a fun place to start.

Fanzine! This isn’t actually a finished zine thanks to time and energy levels, but I did make a collage and whip it into shape for a fanzine cover. I thought about making a mini-zine, but I have so much to say about this show that I wouldn’t know how to squish it all down for a mini.

Why are there two? I haven’t yet sorted out whether I like it more in black and white or in colour. Thoughts?

That’s me for today. I will be back with Happy Mail and more ZineWrimo goodness.

It is day 17 of ZineWriMo, and today we’re talking about our favourite snacks.

Why?

Don’t you have snacks while you’re creating? No? Oh. Well I do!

I’m a foodie with a sweet tooth, and I like finding out about food from around the world. Moving from a tiny town in Wisconsin to a big ol’ city in Australia opened my world to all kinds of different foods from Thai to Greek, and there’s no way I’m going back.

Plus having a snack can make your creative time all the more pleasurable.

I know how I’m usually going on about chocolate covered pretzels because I love the sweet/salt combo but they aren’t exactly easy to find in Australia. (It’s possible, but not easy.) That’s my ideal snack of choice.

Alas, I have to be healthy some of the time – plus it’s spring going on summer in Australia. Time for fruit!

Honestly I have been craving all sorts of fruit lately. So while I don’t always eat a platter like this, this isn’t exactly an abnormal plate for me. Hehe. I especially love the mandarins. Yum.

The only trouble with fruit is that it makes for sticky fingers, which means it’s difficult to create while having fruit as a snack.

Anyone care to share their favourite snacks to have while creating? Let me know in the comments.

Hello, zine friends, and welcome to the second half of the month! For today’s activity we have…

Try Something New: Write/Draw with Something New

Of course, by new, I mean new-to-you. If you’ve never painted with water colours or never written with a fountain pen. Pastels, paints, gel pens, watercolour pencils, so on and so forth.

On the bigger scale of things, it’s about getting you a safe step outside of your comfort zone to enjoy having a to at something new.

Now this is the embarrassing part where I tell you what I intended to do and why I didn’t… 🙁

I have used watercolours before (in school art class when I was about seven), but what I wanted to do is get one of these cool pallet things and a water brush pen (I’ve definitely never used one of those) to have a go at some writing and some painting.

Don’t they look cool?

So that was my intention for today… but then the combination of time, money, shipping times, my foggy memory, so on and so forth. Yeah. All the excuses.

I am sorry. I’ve played with all of the various art supplies I do have, so it wouldn’t be new. I do hope you had a chance to try out something new today or, at least, have some fun zine time.

If you did, let me know in the comments.

Happy halfway point!

I don’t know about you, but I am definitely feeling the halfway point. What a busy month! Three of my goals are in progress and one is done. I haven’t moved on to the bonus round, but I’m already happy with how far I’ve come.

Today for the halfway point, it’s up to you to choose what to do.

I had a lot of errands and such today, but I decided to use my zine time writing out pieces for Don’t Call Me Cupcake 9. I’ve had a bad case of doubts lately, but I’m trying to write my way through it.

What did you do with your day?

Hello, zine friends. It’s day 14 of ZineWriMo, and that means it’s time to…

How you choose to interpret this is, of course, up to you. You may want to make a small kit for a friend or load up a full project bag so you can zine while you’re out on an adventure.

Me? I went with ‘day trip’. Haha.

This is a present from last year that proved incredibly valuable during the house move. I had everything from a box cutter to medicine scripts in this thing, and it was great to have it all in one spot. It comes with two zippered pockets.

This is the first compartment. This is meant to be for organising cables and such, but it’s perfect for my various pens and pencils. The little net zippered pocket holds my two-sided tape, super glue, ruler, and – because I forgot to take it out after I de-moving-bagged it – a lighter.

The second pocket doesn’t hold much at the moment – mostly because I’m not going out a lot. A full sized pair of scissors fits in here perfectly. At the moment, I keep spare paper for notes, mini-zine blanks, and my A5 clipboard.

If I didn’t have this, I would very likely have stuck with my old method of travel creation – a big pencil bag with whatever supplies fit and mini-zine blanks.

Do you have a travel bag for creating on the go? Tell me about it in the comments. 🙂

Hello, zine friends, and welcome to day 13 of ZineWriMo. November is already flying by for me. Maybe that’s just the way of things come this time of year.

The idea behind today’s to-do came from a quote I read ages ago. It’s been too long to get it exactly right, but it came down to the idea that you need to make things that are for your own pleasure and enjoyment. If you keep making things solely for others, you may lose that spark that gives you joy in creating.

I didn’t have the energy to create anything as such today, unfortunately. Instead of gifting myself creating something for me, I gifted myself with a day to relax a bit.

Dreadfully boring, I’m afraid.

How about you? Did you make anything for you today? Do something else nice for yourself? Let me know in the comments.