News and upcoming events – Fall/Winter 2018

So what’s up in ECHO world?

NEWS:

• If you follow this blog, you’ll already know that I recently participated in Inktober (a challenge to encourage drawing with ink every day in October). This month – November – is there is more creative fun with Zine Writing Month (ZineWriMo). I’m working on lots of zines at the same time: a mini-zine about where to find inspiration, a mini-zine about playing guitar, a fanzine, and the next issue of Same Heartbeats. Phew! Follow my progress here.
• The most recent zine I published is A Space of Our Own, a mini-zine about all the reasons why I love autonomous spaces. Check out my zine catalogue for a list of all my zines.
• If you’re looking for New Year’s cards (or postcards for other occasions/celebrations), I recently printed 3 new postcards designs. You can order them by mailing me at flapper_grrr@yahoo.co.uk.
• Last month I did two zine workshops, at RoSa in Brussels and at Le Garach in Namur, that you can read all about on this blog. I was happy to have been invited for these events and it was a lot of fun to share the zine love!
• Some other recent blog posts include a list of zine libraries in Belgium, photos of my trip to the UK in September, a list of illustrations/articles I contributed to zines/books/etc, and mini-reviews of zines I recently read.

EVENTS:

L-festival
November 23rd – Rock Classic, Brussels
Concert of Lavender Witch together with Dragon’s Daughters as part of L-festival (co-organised by Pullet Rocks and Soirées Cerises) where we’ll also sell all of our zines, soaps, and buttons.
Facebook event

Barriversary
November 25th – ACU, Utrecht (Netherlands)
To celebrate the second anniversary of the book café Barricade, there will be a workshop, film, food, … and a panel discussion on radical books, with The Black Archives, Atalanta, and ECHO, co-organised by Bloed Aan De Muur.
Facebook event

Feminist Winter Market
December 4th – Amazone, Brussels
Feminist craft market to find DIY gifts for friends and family! I’ll bring my zines and postcards.
Facebook event

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ZineWriMo – the second week (notebooks, tools and zines)

Are you participating in Zine Writing Month too? How has your ZineWriMo been so far?

The ZineWriMo prompt of Monday November 5th was to make a colourful mini-zine so I started creating Zinespiration, a mini-zine I intended to make already a while ago. I want it to be an artistically more free zine, using lots of colour, collages, going wild with stickers and stamps, while also mentionning all the things that inspire me to make zines… Still need a lot of work though.

I wrote a bit for YngWHO (fanzine about Yngwie Malmsteen), more specifically about the 1980s and my memories of it, about how the masculinity norms of the 80s look quite queer through today’s eyes, and about my mixed feelings about being a fan (of Yngwie). I’m also slowly writing, editing and layouting Same Heartbeats #14. This zine will include a piece about Yngwie too, despite the fact I’m making an entire fanzine at the same time…

I love Sea Green Zines’ idea of an idea book, the prompt of day 6. I’d been thinking about starting a bullet journal for a while and I love all kinds of sketch books, note books, and scrap books. For this prompt I used a notebook that my friend Emilie gave me for my birthday. Here are some photos of the cover and inside pages. It’s useful to have all my creative ideas and plans listed together in one notebook – especially for my postcards – instead of spread all over different notebooks and sketch books.

Two other prompts for this week were “organise your zine-making goodies” and “show off your favourite zine tools”. So I reorganised my stamps and washi tapes in new boxes. Before, they were all in one box with some other materials but having them each in separate smaller boxes makes it more enjoyable to create stuff with them. I wrote a bit about zine tools in Same Heartbeats #12 if you’re curious to find out more.

More about my ZineWriMo 2018 experience:

• My plans
• First day
• First week
• All posts

Zines I read in 2018 (September – October)

Summer is over but luckily Autumn still has some sunny days where I live. It was nice to read zines in parks, as well as on the train, on my lunch breaks… I was fortunate to get lots of new zines recently from zine friends, trades, distros, and during a visit to the UK. So many in fact that my to-read box just keeps getting bigger. In the past two months I read plenty of amazing little booklets about a variety of subjects such as surviving Christmas, autism, lesbian movie drinking games, Murder She Wrote, crafting… and so much more!

This post is a list of all the zines I read in September and October. Wherever possible I’ll mention a webshop, website or blog. If you’d like to buy a certain zine but no web link is mentioned, contact me and I might be able to get you in touch with the zinester. Several of these zines are also available from Pen Fight, Portland Button Works or Antiquated Future.

Let’s dive into it:

ZineWriMo 2018 – the first week (getting started)

I decided to summarise the progress I’m making on ZineWriMo on a weekly basis instead of posting about it everyday. Gives me more time for actual zine-making… So what did I do in the first week?

• 

  Guitarrr #2 + “Fire and Ice” LP

  I wrote and drew a lot for Guitarrr #2, a mini-zine filled with tips and tricks for learning to play guitar or bass. You can see the work in progress on the right, next to cover art of the “Fire and Ice” LP by Yngwie Malmsteen that I found in a record shop in Namur last Saturday just before I did a zine workshop there. It was the perfect soundtrack for Guitarrr #2. 🙂 By the way, thank you Jérôme of Chocs et Ennui for including some Yngwie songs in the playlist for the workshop! Other musical treasures in that playlist included Bratmobile, Petrol Girls, La Fraction, and Bikini Kill. All great for working on a zine about playing music!

• 

  Brussels zine + Inktober drawings

  I starting drawing two illustrations for Workaholic, a zine edited by Nyx of Sea Green Zines. I was happy to be asked by Nyx to contribute to her zine as I was thinking of writing something for it but couldn’t decide about what exactly. I’m sure it’s going to be a very interesting zine so I’m glad my drawings will be included in it!

• I wrote a bit for YngWHO, my fanzine about Yngwie Malmsteen, and for #14 of my zine Same Heartbeats, and thought about which of my Inktober drawings could be used for the Brussels zine I’m working on together with Sister Ray Zines.
• Finally I started writing reviews for the zines I read in September and October.

So that was it for now. A lot of starting-to-do-stuff but still lots of work finishing up everything. Keep an eye on this blog for more ZineWriMo updates! 🙂

Zine workshop at Le Garach in Namur (+ autonomous spaces in Belgium)

On October 27th I did a zine workshop for Chocs et Ennui at Le Garach in Namur, a nice creative autonomous space in a garage (hence the name 🙂 ) filled with silkscreened posters, a zine distro (that now includes some of my zines), some speakers accompanying us with a great playlist and yummy self-baked cakes. The participants were all so enthusiastic and creative in so many ways. It was a great joy working with them to make (mini)zines.

During the workshop I talked about the basics: what zines are and how to make them, we discussed the potential political aspects of zine-making, and then everyone started making a (mini)zine of their own.

I was happy to do a zine workshop in Le Garach because I value such self-organised and non-commercial spaces a lot. We need places where we can do creative stuff, activist stuff, learn, share skills, meet like-minded people… That’s also why I recently made a mini-zine about the importance of autonomous spaces called A space of our own. My 24-hour-zine Space Invasion also discusses the value of such free spaces.

Here is a list of active autonomous spaces in Belgium that I know of:

• Assez – Gent
• Le Barlok – Brussels
• Le Garach – Namur
• KreAction – Liège
• Finix – Hasselt
• Highway to Hell – Liège
• Het Landhuis – Gent
• Poisson Sans Bicyclette – Brussels
• Le Space – Brussels
• Vort’n Vis – Ieper
• La Zone – Liège

Feminist street-art spotted in Namur

Each of these spaces is unique and precious. There exist probably a lot more than the ones I listed here, I may have forgotten to mention some or I may not even know of the existence of others. Do you know any other cool spaces? Please let me know in the comments.

During the workshop at Le Garach, while we were all concentrating on making zines, I started working on the second issue of Guitarrr (see image), a mini-zine filled with tips for learning to play guitar and bass. I’m continuing working on it during ZineWriMo this month and hope to finish it soon…

ZineWriMo 2018 – day 1!

ZineWriMo logo

Inktober just ended yesterday and today is ZineWriMo day 1! ZineWriMo stands for “zine writing month”, a month dedicated to making zines. I wrote a bit about my plans for November here.

According to Sea Green Zines’ list of prompts, today can be used to do some brainstorming. So that’s what I’m going to do, as well as start with some actual zine-making. I have a long holiday weekend ahead starting today, so time for creative stuff!

See how I’m already recycling my Inktober drawings? (See previous post on this blog)

I’d like to make a lot of zines this month, or at least work on them:

• Same Heartbeats #14
• YngWHO? – a fanzine about Yngwie Malmsteen
• Zinespiration – a minizine about things that inspire me to make zines
• Guitarrr #2 – a minizine about learning to play guitar (and bass)
• a radical DIY tourist zine about Brussels

and I’d like to contribute to a few zines too! Phew!

 

So let’s get to it!

Today I’m working on Guitarrr #2. I started making it during a zine workshop I did at Le Garach in Namur. See photo on the left.

Guitarrr #1 was made about a half year ago but I forgot to mention some things and have learned some new things in the meantime (I’m still learning as I probably always will).

I’m no guitar expert or music teacher but I’d like to share what I know to demystify guitar (and bass) playing and encourage – especially – more women and girls to pick up a guitar or bass (or any other instrument) and start a band! And while we’re talking about making your own music, why not check out these song-writing videos by Vinyldyke Records?

Inktober – all my drawings of October 2018

Inktober has been a fun as well as a challenging experience. To have to draw something (in ink) every day of the month October wasn’t always easy but it did give me a sense of accomplishment and pushed me to come up with ideas and sketches quickly. It encouraged me to draw more which is always good and I like that the results, subjects and styles were quite diverse (though I could have experimented a bit more with drawing techniques). I didn’t always follow the prompts but it was nice to have backup ideas when I got stuck.

I will use some of these drawings for future projects. Some of them are beginnings of comics, illustrations or (mini)zines featuring Chainsaw Bunny and Yngwie Malmsteen. So watch this space!

Have a look at all of my Inktober drawings: