Category: Zinewrimo

Hello, zine friends! It’s the last WIP Wednesday of ZineWriMo 2017! I hope you were able to get your zine on today or have already accomplished your goals so you didn’t need the work day.

I am very happy to say that I have finished Don’t Call Me Cupcake 9.5!

It’s so cute to see a mini DCMC. Haha. When I was trying to write about my move, everything felt too big and messy for one zine. I put this one series of events in a mini-zine of its own to help me process it away from everything else.

I actually almost stopped at one point, the doubts closing in, but I withheld judgement until I finished it. I am so glad I did. I think it works as its own zine, its own event.

I also have all the writing, proofing, and printing done for Don’t Call Me Cupcake 9. I just have to assemble the zines. I love this part!

That’s me for today. Feel free to leave links in the comments to your works in progress.

Zine zines! I love zine zines! I’ve enjoyed a book or two about zines, but a zine about zines! Love, love, love.

Oh, there I go getting ahead of myself. Hello there, wonderful zine friends! We’re nearly there, aren’t we? Nearly to the end of this month and onto the final month of the year. But before I get ahead of myself yet again, I’ll get to today’s ZineWriMo task:

As I mentioned above, I do love a zine zine. I’ve made two so far. The mini-zine ‘What’s All This Then?’

I ended up handing this out at the Melbourne Art Book Fair earlier this year to anyone who looked thoroughly confused by all the zines (and there were plenty).

There’s also the first of what I hope will be a long-lived series, Paper Currency:

I’m so happy with the response to this zine and am looking forward to digging into making the second. If you’d like to advertise your distro/library/site/etc inside, please let me know!

Of course, if you want to learn about zines, you can start where I started quite a few years ago:

I’m fairly sure there’s a more revised version (or two) out there. I need to get a copy because I’m also fairly sure someone pinched my copy. Such is the way, eh? That’s how good this is! I highly, highly recommend it.

Oh! I nearly forgot another favourite:

This one is by Davida Gypsy Breier of Xerography Debt fame.

I’m sure I’m forgetting others I love, too, but that’s what I get for posting so late.

Alas, issues remain, and I have to delay the Happy Mail for another day. Please let me know in the comments if you made a zine zine today and/or have made one in the past. I would absolutely love to see itQ

Hello, zine friends, and happy start to the final week of November! And not even a full week at that. Eeesh. How the time is flying.

Today I’m combining days 26 and 27, so let’s jump right in.

Okay, so it’s less collage and more just ripped up pieces of paper, but it turned into a background I rather liked for one of my zine covers. (Bonus cookies if you know which one.)

I used to feel that collages just weren’t my thing, but after giving a few a go, I’m rather liking it. I do need to pick up some magazines, though. I need more inspiration.

On to today!

A beautiful facet of the zine community is the free zine. The zine given away or traded for the love of zine-ing. Many distros with physical shops have free sections or baskets for you to get into to your hearts’ delight.

If you’re in the Brisbane and like the look of some of the zines I’ve made so far this ZineWriMo, drop in at Copy & Destroy Zine Library. I sent a little somethin’ somethin’ for their free section earlier this month.

I wasn’t able to drop off any copies of my zines out and about today, but I was planning on dropping them at my library. Your local library can be a great place to do this without provoking your anxiety.

That’s me for today. Happy mail and ZineWriMo day 28 coming tomorrow. ^_^

Hello, zine friends. I hope your weekend is going well or is off to a good start depending on your time zone.

Today’s zine task is one sorely needed one on my part. I’m definitely one for stockpiling zine parts.

I like stockpiling parts. Taking an afternoon to cut out cupcakes, cut embroidery thread to the right length, fold zines. I put on some music or a show I like, and the whole thing becomes less of a task and more of a nice, calm way to spend a few hours.

It’s entirely possible that this sort of thing isn’t useful to you. But if it is, let me know in the comments what zine parts you stockpile.

Hello, zine friends, and happy Friday!

I hope you all are doing well. I’m a little fuzzy on time zones, but I think my American friends may be all sleepy and full of stuffing after their Thanksgiving feasts. (Or am I calling that a little early? Either way, I hope those celebrating have a wonderful day! I do miss pumpkin pie a lot this time of year. 😉

To be honest with you, I’m feeling a little blue today. You see, today’s prompt is:

no offline friends here in Murray Bridge just yet, so I’ve been sharing pics of what I’m doing on my Instagram stories, but it doesn’t feel the same. I also just so happen to be finishing up a zine about the two friendship breakups that happened over the move and, yeah… Blue.

So please tell me you’ve been having a great Friday, zines or not (though aren’t Fridays always better with zines?). I’m going to go enjoy a doughnut and finish the zine I’ve been reading so I can post the review here soon.

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.