Februstitchery – craft zines

Hi, how are you? I caught a nasty virus (not the c-virus thankfully) so I haven’t been able to do much crafting for my Februstitchery challenge. Instead of showing you my nearly non-existent craft projects progress, I thought I’d share some craft zines from my collection today, while I go back to napping… 🙂

I don’t own a whole lot of craft zines. I could use some more, so if you have any recommendations or if you’ve made a craft zine yourself, please let me know!

The zine I think of first when talking about craft zines is Sugar Paper. I have lots of issues (not all of them sadly) of this UK-based zine and love them all. It’s really the ultimate craft zine for me. It contains lots of ideas and easy instructions for a diverse range of crafts and each issue has its own theme such as 90s teen magazines, space, winter, the great outdoors, parties, and halloween. As a bonus, each issue contains a little craft tool or supplies to make something from the zine. Unfortunately it seems that Sugar Paper is no longer available but you can still get artwork, crafts and other zines from Seleena Laverne Daye, one of the zinesters. I highly recommend you check out all her creative work! You can find some short reviews of Sugar Paper issues here.

Also out of print are Hoopla and Radical Cross Stitch from Australia. Its zinester is still involved in activist cross stitch though so check her website. The zines are full of articles, how-tos, patterns, and cross stitch protest ideas which I love. They were published in the 00s when the word “craftivism” (craft + activism) first became a thing. Hoopla #3 even includes some pages by yours truly (I’d almost forgotten about this 🙂 ). I wish more zines like these were published today!

B.A.D. Stitch is a newer mini-zine with small funny cross stitch patterns of cats who don’t give a shit. 🙂 There are more patterns in the zinester’s webshop and you can find beautiful designs and inspiration on their instagram as well.

How to Make Your Own Period Underwear is a craft zine published in 2017 by a zinester/crafter who used to live in Berlin. As the subtitle says it’s an “illustrated step by step guide” with clear instructions and tips. It also includes instructions on how to make reusable cloth pads and washing advice. I wrote about this zine in my monthly “zines I read” reviews here.

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I feel very happy and lucky to have all of these zines at home to look through for inspiration and ideas. I don’t just love the craft ideas and how-to guides they contain but also the fact that they are very DIY and lo-fi in their over-all zine approach. They also inspire me to make a craft zine of my own… Maybe some day. I’ve written some craft instructions in the earlier issues of Same Heartbeats but I like the idea of creating an entire crafts mini-zine. Perhaps for Mini-Zine March?