IZM 2022 week 3 – buttons, bandcamp, book shelves, and brainstorming

Hi! Welcome to another International Zine Month (IZM) update! I hope you’re coping well with whatever the season is bringing, whether it’s heat waves or snow storms. Be sure to make some time for resting and reading zines. 🙂 In this blogpost I’m showing you my button machine and my #witchyjournalchallenge pages, reorganising my zine shelves, brainstorming for new projects, and inviting you to create zines together!

 

Buttons & webshops

Here you can see my trusty button machine while I’m making new sigil buttons. It’s a mechanical tool so the buttons are all hand-made, it’s no automated process. In an upcoming blogpost I’ll zoom in on all the new witchy merch like buttons and stickers that I recently made.

And while we’re talking about merch… I’m thinking of closing my Bandcamp shop. Webshops can be quite costly with Bandcamp and Paypal taking their share, while I insist on keeping my prices low, and now the IRS might take a cut too (and I don’t even live in America). So maybe I’ll go back to the oldschool way of arranging orders via personal messages and emails, the same way I do for trades/swaps. I’ve also recently created a Ko-fi page and might add a shop there (at least for digital zines), it could be a cheaper alternative. At the same time I’d like to get my postcards and zines distributed by more (local) brick & mortar shops. So if you want anything from my Bandcamp shop (music, zines, merch, bundles), hurry and please get it before mid August!

By the way, did you already see my witchy zines?

Witchy journal

Last week I continued creating pages for the #witchyjournalchallenge started by La Greenwitch. The prompts were: “the heart of the cave”, “paradise lost”, “a ritual tapestry”, and “transcendence” (oops, I wrote a typo there). Which one is your favourite? 🙂

By the way, the moon on the transcendence page can change its phase!

 

Talking about witchy stuff, I shared some awesome creative witchy YouTube videos here.

Brainstorming

A few days ago I started brainstorming and writing down ideas for a zine-themed oracle deck. I might only release it digitally, for people to print at home, because I’ve had some big printing expenses with my latest zines/postcards/stickers that I’d like to break even with first. 🙂 I love creating oracle decks, there are so many possibilities! I’ve made one just for myself which focuses on self-care and I keep thinking of more themes I could explore. I recommend to make your own, even just to use yourself. It’s a fun creation process and interesting to do daily draws with messages you’d like to send to yourself.

I also brainstormed and began writing and sketching for 2 new issues of Witches’ Brew. One will be a perzine like #3 and will focus on “time & space” and the other one will be about portable magick, art travel toolboxes, and self-care kits. The latter is largely inspired by Laura-Marie’s zine about her emotional first aid kit that I love. She made a video about it too!

Bookshelves

As one of the official IZM prompts suggested, I did some reorganising/rearranging of my zine collection and zine shelves. Here is a “shelfie”… 🙂 Actually, I just need more shelves and more boxes… My collection is growing so much! ❤

Zine-making gathering:

On Saturday from 3 pm I’m organising a little get-together in Ghent to make zines, do crafts, write in journals, swap zines, and/or just hang out. No workshop, just a small informal creative gathering. Let’s meet at the Bijloke park near the STAM museum in Ghent. There are red picnic benches in the park that look perfect for zine-making. Unfortunately the Kunstenbibliotheek and its zine collection will be closed but you can do some window shopping if you like. 🙂 Hope to see you there!

To do for this week:

• edit my zinewiki.com page
• put some zines and/or books in nearby little free libraries / “ruilbibs”
• work on new zines (at home and/or outside)
• continue working on the #witchyjournalchallenge