ValenZines and other gifts for friends and lovers

Tis the season to celebrate love and friendship! Of course that doesn’t need to result in buying mass-produced Valentine-themed gifts. I’m all in favour of consuming less and creating and reusing more. So to support that ideal, you can find some tutorials on this blog for how to make your own zines and spell bags for example.

If you do want to support an independent artist and DIY zine maker this season, you can check out my webshop or email me to place an order. I have zines, postcards, spell bags, music, buttons, and embroideries available. Here are some examples:

International Zine Month 2021 – L7 zines

A few days ago, I decided to invent a new International Zine Month prompt to encourage myself and others to delve into the relationship between zines and music. The idea of this prompt is that you can do or make (and/or share online) anything relating to music and zines. This can include making a playlist about zine-related songs, researching the herstory of zines in music subcultures, marveling over your favourite music fanzines, or making a zine about your favourite band. I invite you to participate and post about it online before the end of July (and let me know about it)!

Read on to find out what I did for this prompt…

ValenZines: zines to give to friends or lovers

So Valentines is coming up and in my opinion that’s an excellent moment to make a zine for someone you love, write a zine about your crush, and/or publish a zine about love, friendship, or relationships.

I have a few zines in stock that could make excellent gifts too:

(Not that I want to contribute to the overcommercialisation of February 14th and I mostly encourage you to make your own gifts but I’m quite proud of these zines)

All the zines and postcards that I’ve made in 2020

December and January are perfect months to reflect on the recent past and to look back at stuff that happened. In this post I will share all of the ECHO zines and postcards that I’ve made this year.

If you are interested in any of these zines or postcards, or others, get in touch.

Most of the zines shown here were featured in the recent Happy Mail video by Sea Green Zines which you can watch here. ❤

Zine collaborations in 2020

In a post I wrote a while ago, I mentioned all zines that I’ve made since the Covid-19 lockdown/pandemic started in March 2020 in Belgium. Around the same time that I worked on some of those zines in the beginning of the pandemic, an enthusiastic creative collaboration named “with_drawn” started…

Summer of zines: new ECHO zines

The Covid-19 quarantine has proved to be an excellent time to make zines for me. I made a bunch of of new ECHO publications and also collaborated on others.

It started small: in the beginning of the lockdown I created a mini-zine about herbs called Witches’ Brew #1 which allowed me to retain some connection to nature while staying mostly at home. Thanks to a herb patch at a local park, I could draw and write about rosemary, lemon balm, thyme, and other herbs, and create a little booklet.

New splitzine by with_drawn: Planets of Capitalocene, Surplus Humanity, and Revolt / Dancing, Drawing, and Day Dreaming

New splitzine by with_drawn:

Planets of Capitalocene, Surplus Humanity, and Revolt / Dancing, Drawing, and Day Dreaming

This split zine was made by the with_drawn collective during the online 24 hour event set up by Brighton Zine Network in July.

The zine discusses topics such as gentrification and the politics of maps. It includes political theory, song lyrics, collages, and drawings.

28 pages, A5, colour cover, b/w inside

How to get a copy of this zine?

The zine can be downloaded and printed for free here. Mail to with_drawn or to me to arrange for a paper copy. The zine is available for donation (+ postage).

*****************************************

IZM 2020 round-up – from making zines to shelfies!

International Zine Month (July) has ended about a week ago. Here is a little summary of things I did. I already posted about the first half of the month here. I didn’t do all the things I set out to do but that’s fine.

STUFF I DID DURING (THE SECOND HALF OF) IZM:

First of all I read a lot of super interesting and amazing zines!

Then onto the zines that were created during IZM:

I printed copies of the zines Confined #1 and 2 (lockdown diary comic zine in two parts):

I continued drawing the IZM diary comic that I will print and publish as Scissors & Chainsaws #2 soon!

Communal Care – new zine by with_drawn

Hi, I would like to draw your attention to a new zine project! “Communal Care” is the first collaborative zine that was just released by the new with_drawn collective. Be sure to check it out. The zine focuses on self-care and community care during high stress events such as the Covid-19 crisis.

What’s inside this zine?

• Resilience pie
• Mental health safety plan
• Reflection on privileges
• Ideas for distraction
• Music as self-care
• Meditation and breathing techniques
• Consciousness-raising with zines
• Small ideas for groups
• + more!

36 pages, A5, b/w printed

How to get a copy?

You can download the zine here to print yourself or read online, and there are paper copies available too. The paper zine is sold on donation (+ postage). Mail to with_drawn(at)riseup.net (or find the zine on future shared zine tables with ECHO – when zine events will happen again…).

PS. with_drawn will make/print more zines soon. There already is a translation of a scientific article related to Covid-19 available. Keep an eye on the blog for more news.

IZM 2020 progress: new zines, Lavender Witch news, and other stuff

We’re over half-way in International Zine Month so it’s time for me to look back at the first few weeks. I’ve been neglecting the list of daily IZM prompts a bit but on the zine-making front things are going great! I don’t think I’ve ever made/worked on so many zines (including several collaborations) before in my life… 🙂

Some things I did:

• I’m reading zines, of course. I will post photos later of all the zines I read this month.
• I edited and finished the two lockdown diary comic zines I made in the past few months. I also decided on a title: Confined. The first batch was printed this Friday. I’ll announce the release on this blog soon.
• I started a new diary comic zine, Scissors & Chainsaws #2, to talk and draw about everything I’m doing during International Zine Month (mostly but not only zine-related stuff). It’s sort of a continuation of Confined #1 and 2 too… I’m really addicted to making diary comics at the moment…
• The zine Communal Care that the new With_Drawn collective had working on in the past few months was printed. You can find it online here soon.
• The same collective also just made a 24 hour split zine and participated in the virtual 24 hour zine event organised by Brighton Zine Network. The zine is called Planet of Capitalocene, Surplus Humanity, and Revolt / Dancing, Drawing, and Day Dreaming. It’s #3 in the With_drawn series.
• The Archiv der Jugendkulturen (Archive of Youth Culture, based in Berlin) interviewed me about zines. So cool! *blush* Read it here. If you’re ever in Berlin, make sure to visit this awesome archive that has great collections about zines, riot grrrl, punk, and other subcultures.
• My band Lavender Witch released our first album and our first zine “Awakening“! Order it on Bandcamp.
• Not zine-related but a lot of fun: Lavender Witch was interviewed for the radio show Bricabracarama at Radio Primitive based in Reims, France. We were also introduced at RadioT from Germany. Next week we will play at the virtual edition of Gentse Feesten at Kinky Star (in collaboration with Girls Go BOOM). It will be screened live at 6 pm CET so you can watch from the comfort of your home! Find the facebook event here.

That’s all for now!