Lammas – summer time

Today is Lammas or Lughnasadh, a pagan holiday that’s known as the first harvest day. For this occasion I redecorated my altar and made some plans for the month of August. Read on to find out more…

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!

IZM 2022 – July is International Zine Month starts today!

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. 🙂

Spring and Summer dreams

As you can see in the image above I’ve used my creative powers to design a little visionboard or dream collage to send my wishes for this Spring and Summer out into the world…

I’d love to see small outdoors activities like picnics, creative workshops, small concerts, jams, games, small craft fairs, herbal walks, drawing, and reading groups this Spring and Summer. Outdoors activities centred around zines, crafts, drawing, queer-feminism, activism, DIY culture, witchcraft, punk, comics… wouldn’t that be cool? Anyone want to collaborate to make (some of) them a reality in Ghent? Mail me! I’m not a big organiser but I can help with small events like this.

Let’s make the most of the sunnier weather while also taking into account that indoors spaces are still not safe for people who are at risk during the ongoing pandemic. Assuming that everything is ok now and that anyone can attend indoors activities is ableist and ageist. That’s why outdoors activities are important as well. (Also, please keep wearing your mask indoors even if your government says it isn’t necessary anymore). ❤

PS. April 20th was national “playing-outside” day in Belgium! Let’s extend that to the whole summer! 🙂

My plans and dreams for 2022

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:

Looking back at 2021

Hello 2022!

One thing I kinda enjoy about New Year’s is looking back at the past year and blogging about it. Can you tell?

2021 obviously wasn’t an easy year for anyone but I’m trying to keep this post light and positive and focus on creative projects. I hope you’re doing alright!

Here are the things I did in the past year:

What would you like to see from Echo Zines in 2022?

Hello, dear reader! I have some questions for you. I’ve been running Echo Zines (and Echo Records, to release a few tapes) for 20 years now and while I’m certainly not out of ideas for ongoing and upcoming projects, I’m also wondering about what YOU think, want, and expect! What would you like to see from Echo Zines in 2022?

ZineWriMo 2021 – looking back

ZineWriMo 2021‘s final day has arrived! This blog post talks about what I did in the second half of this month. (You can read about the first half here). Read on to find out about my zine projects, music news, collection and washi tapes and stamps, witchiness, black out poetry, and upcoming plans:

ZineWriMo 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…

How to celebrate a zine anniversary in a pandemic?

How to celebrate a zineversary or zine anniversary in a pandemic?

Hmmm, honestly I’m not so sure… This summer it’s been 20 years since I put out my very first zine called Punk Feminist Mini Zine and I’ve been wanting to do “something” to celebrate that. In May I wrote down a list of ideas on this blog but some of those ideas seem hard to put into practice at the moment because of the ongoing pandemic (zine residency, zine tour, zine party?) even though I’d very much like to make them happen. I’m also not much of an “organiser” so even in non-covid times I wouldn’t really know how to go about some of my ideas.

But at least I have done some stuff… and plan to do some more: