Category: Zinewrimo

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.

Hello, hello, and happy Sunday. It’s a hot and lazy one here in this little part of Oz. However, it is a happy one, as today’s activity lined up perfectly for me.

This is one of my Little Reminders zines. Unlike the other ones, though, I didn’t feel ‘finished’ when I finished the ink work.

Sneaky note time! I wrote out all the things that I wanted to say and printed it so it could hide on the inside of the zine for anyone who sees the little star to read.

NOW it feels finished. 🙂

Did you make a double-sided mini-zine today? Let me know about it in the comments.

Hello, zine friends. It’s that time for that great and mysterious thing: the media box.

Of course, I jest.

When I first started spreading the list of daily activities around, people were confused about what a media box actually was. My bad. At its simplest, a media box is…

…a place to keep all the cut and paste bits and pieces that go with and inspire your zine creating.

If you missed it and want a longer explanation, check out my post So What’s a Media Box for more details.

Just in case anyone is nervous, I didn’t actually make a media box. I just picked one out. Well, two, really…

The first is a cheap storage box from a $2 store, and the other is a makeup bag.

I don’t have much in the first container yet, as I’ve just started collecting bits and pieces – mostly die cuts and paper patterns I like. It has been nice to be able to grab it and get to zine-ing with whatever colours and such take my attention. My washi collection needed a container of its own. Haha.

So those are my media boxes. Do you have one? Did you make one? Let me know in the comments.

Hello, zine friends, and welcome to day 10 of ZineWriMo. Today is a day for trying something new.

Blackout poetry isn’t new to a lot of you, but if anyone is unfamiliar:

Blackout poems can be created using the pages of old books or even articles cut from yesterday’s newspaper. Using the pages of an existing text, blackout poets isolate then piece together single words or short phrases from these texts to create lyrical masterpieces.

– Scholastic

So that’s it. You take (make copies of) articles or passages from books – basically whatever text you want – and then black out words to make the remaining words mean something new.

I chose to make a copy of the info sheet for one of my meds and a copy of the first page of my third novel, Dark Echoes.

To be honest, I was a bit nervous. But once I got started…

I ended up with three, but I really could have kept going on for ages. It gets to be fun, finding alternate messages within text. I will definitely be doing this again.

Did you give blackout poetry a go? Did you like it? Let me know in the comments.

Hello, zine friends! I have no idea what’s going on in my brain, but I keep thinking it’s the 8th or the 10th. My brain just doesn’t want to accept the existence of the 9th.

Anyway, it is day nine of ZineWriMo, which means today is ‘Make a Zine for a Cause’!

This can be your local animal shelter or the Breast Cancer Foundation. It doesn’t matter what the cause is or the size of the cause; it’s about getting the word out there.

I got started rather late in the day, but I knew what cause I wanted to make a zine about…

Okay, so it’s a cause slash awareness thing in that there is a bias when you call it ‘chronic fatigue syndrome’, but people listen when you say the scientific name: myalgic encephalomyelitis. So my cause is CFS awareness but also the bias in the name.

Remember back when I said these daily prompts are meant to be fun – not stressful?

That’s why I am not stressing when I say… I didn’t finish the zine. Mini-zines are always more work than I think they are, and I don’t want zines to ever be a stress-causer in my life. (I’m not in love with the cover either, to be honest.) So I am going to call it at that for the day and say that a start is better than not starting.

How’d you go with today? What causes did you champion? Let me know in the comments.

PS. There won’t be any zine reviews this week, but it’s only a two-day blip. Zine reviews will be back and rocking next week.

Hello, zine friends! Today is Wednesday, which means it’s the first work on your WIP (work in progress) day for ZineWriMo 2017.

Today I took a little time to organise a bit of outgoing mail (that should have been organised a few weeks ago *cough*), but I spent most of my time working on the mini-zines I mentioned in my goals post. (Near pun not intentional. Hehe)

With the mini-zines Little Reminders 2 and Little Reminders 3, I do all the writing and drawing in pencil first. My writing tends to be a bit angled, so it’s good to make most of the mistakes in pencil before putting ink to it.

The pencil erases without harming the ink, so it’s winning all around.

These are so close to being done! Just a bit of clean up and colour, and they’ll be ready to join Little Reminders 1. I’m thinking of making all three into a pack on Etsy.

So what have you been up to today? Check any goals off the list? Did you get the chance to work on a zine? Let me know in the comments.