DIY feminist zines since 2001
Hello and welcome to International Zine Month (IZM) 2022! Are you just as happy and excited as me that July has finally arrived to give us an excuse to do even more zine stuff? 😀
In today’s blogpost I want to set out my plans for this month. Not only do I want to participate as much as possible in IZM but I’m also taking part in the #witchyjournalchallenge. I think those two go together quite nicely. 🙂
Continue reading “IZM 2022 – July is International Zine Month starts today!”
In the beginning of February I set myself a creative challenge to try and make a witch-themed lino stamp every day of February. I named this challenge “Februwitchery“. 😀
So now let’s take a look at the results…
Continue reading “Februwitchery – all the lino stamps I made”
As I wrote in my dreams & plans for 2022 blogpost, I really like the idea of creative challenges in which you get to do a creative thing every day of a month. Some examples include Inktober (making an ink drawing or sketch every day of October), Stitchtober (embroidering during October), and ZineWriMo (making zines in November). Also, I’ve been wanting to focus on making a bunch of lino stamps for a while now and I’d like to give it a go this month. My plan is to carve a small lino stamp every day in February. At the end I’d like to print them all to show the results on this blog and on social media. Not sure if I’ll manage to do this every day but we’ll see!
Of course, if you’re tempted, you can also participate and do any creative stuff with a witchy theme such as embroidery, mini-zines, drawing, comics… It would be cool to see the results! #februwitchery 😉
By the way, it’s Imbolc today (Midwinter) as well as Lunar New Year where I live (I assume because it’s the first New Moon of the year?). Happy Imbolc!
PS. On the photo bove you can see some lino cuts I made a while ago: “letter soup” (for the zine of the same name), “echo zines” with an envelope, stars, 2 female symbols, and a bird.
All the usual new year’s resolutions are so uninteresting, don’t you think? I prefer to make a list of things I would really LIKE to do. How about you? What are your dreams and plans for 2022?
On the image above you can see a hand-made oracle deck that I created myself. I selected some cards that I think fit for the beginning of the new year: adventures, big dreams, exploring, finding magic everywhere, connecting with your community, colouring outside the lines (also a reference to a zine I love)… Find out more about my plans:
Zine Writing Month or ZineWriMo has begun two days ago! It lasts for the entire month of November. There is a facebookgroup and an official poster with prompts (also see below) if you want to participate. Of course you can also just make zines because that is the most important part of ZineWriMo. It’s not necessary to do all the prompts but they serve as nice ideas and inspiration I think. For example I like that the month starts off slowly with brainstorming and planning, which is what I’ve been doing (a bit) so far.
One thing I’d like to accomplish this November is finishing (and maybe printing?) the 5 mini-zines I’ve been working on for a while. See my previous post about witchy zines. By the way, I think November is as much a witchy and spooky month as October so let’s continue doing witchy stuff and making witchy zines! 🙂 It would be cool to make progress on Echotopia #2 and Confined #5 as well. Another plan I have is to occasionally blog about ZineWriMo, maybe on a weekly basis or so. I’m also looking forward to prompts like “creative space”, “tools of the zine trade”, “mini zine kit”, and “black out poetry” (I created a black out poem recently, inspired by Coin-Operated Press’ video and am ready for more!). It’s gonna be fun!
I’m curious to hear about your plans! Please share in the comments…
I intended to read at least one zine every day in July for International Zine Month (IZM) and succeeded! I ended up reading 46 in total. My selection for this reading challenge included a comic about travel adventures, a comic about overcoming tiredness, metazines encouraging readers to make their own zines, several riot grrrl zines from different parts of the world including Brazil and Denmark, a few quaranzines with personal reflections and experiences, a Jewish queer zine with personal-political stories and artwork, a zine about dealing with abuse and community accountability, a fanzine about horror films directed by women, personal-political zines about manarchists and anarchist organising, perzines with a glimpse into the life of the authors, mini-zines about mental health, a play your own adventure about zines, a music/perzine about reclaiming an interest in playing guitar, a study about black face masked as a children’s holiday and how art can offer criticism or alternatives, a zine with ideas for dabbling in witchcraft, an artzine about winter plants, and more! I love that these publications use a mix of text and images to express what they want to say, with fictional stories and passionate revelations as well as black & white collages and splashes of colour in the paper choice, binding, or ink. One zinester even made a curiously folded zine, one of the tiniest zines I’ve ever seen, and a mini-zine with a pocket filled with seeds! Clearly, every zine maker has their own unique style and voice and each zine is so personal and reveals a lot about the creator or author. I recommend checking them all out!
PS. I actually read the two feminist mini-zines by Girls Go BOOM that you can see in the photos below in June but forgot to add them to my previous post. I got both of them during a recent visit to the Girls Go BOOM zine library and look forward to upcoming issues.
More photos and links to where you can find the zines:
Continue reading “Zines I’ve read in 2021 (July) – International Zine Month edition”
Today’s prompt for International Zine Month is: “Post online about your favorite zines!” (see Stolen Sharpie Revolution for the entire list of prompts) and I’m going to combine it with the bonus prompt “read a zine a day”.
Continue reading “International Zine Month 2021 – read a zine every day”
Inktober ( = ink drawing challenge taking place in October every year) started off well for me this year. I made drawings for 11 days in a row but then I needed a break. I continued drawing on and off but didn’t follow most of the prompts. In the meantime, I was also doing the lay-out of the CD and zine of my band Lavender Witch, designing and printing two new postcards, and writing songs. So yeah, can’t really complain about my creativity levels in October.
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Take a look at all the drawings I made last month:
ZineWriMo – “zine writing month” – is starting tomorrow and takes place during the entire month of November. Like for the previous years, Nyx of Sea Green Zines made a list of prompts for each day of the month. —>
I like that the prompts seem manageable and at ease. There’s no need or expectation to make a zine or mini-zine every day. There’s enough space for brainstorming, preparing, and work-in-progress. Still, I probably won’t succeed in participating every day, but we’ll see how it goes. No stress, zine-making should be fun, not duty.
What I’d like to do this month:
What are YOUR plans?
Song of the day (while it’s still October):
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:
Continue reading “Inktober – all my drawings of October 2018”
Echo Zines 