Grab Zine by the Horns

ZineWriMo Lite continues…

I was going to make a mini zine about my favorite snacks to have while engaging in hardcore zine-production, but I didn’t. I’ve made quite a bit of mini zines lately, and I really wanted to focus more on my work in progress zine, which by the way, I’m having a total blast with. This morning, I spent typing away on my typewriter, and now my fingers are nice and bruised.

I got a bunch of the writing done. I did the collage, I wrote a poem, I started planning the cover and have a pretty good idea of what I want to do for the comics. In fact, if I get the comics part nailed, I’m thinking about getting one part of it as a tattoo. Probably on my left wrist. A cute little drawing of my mascot, Twigz, flashing metalhorns will look adorable.

Speaking of metalhorns, I went to Sunday Metal Night last night! I was planning on taking my notebook but I completely forgot. Anyway, I’ll still add a small segment about it in my zine. I’m having so much fun writing metal, talking metal, listening to metal, living and breathing it at every waking hour, I find myself loving it even more.

Seriously, I love zines and I love metal. Writing a zine about metal is just about EVERYTHING! I really don’t know why I haven’t done it sooner. Silly me.

Regarding the double-sided mini zine, I think I’ll incorporate the snack theme on one side of it, but I’ll keep it for later. I really want to keep going with my WIP.

Meanwhile, it’s my daughter’s birthday parties this week – at the daycare tomorrow, at my in-laws’ on Wednesday, and at my parents’ this weekend, so I got enough things to keep me busy, I doubt I’ll get much work done anyway.

Peace, love and Disturbed is coming to Israel bitches!!!

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ZineWriMo: Stickage

In this segment of ZineWriMo, we will be discussing collages.

I like collages. Unless my glue runs out – then I like my local office supplies store where I can purchase more glue to make more collages.

Collages rule because they usually don’t involve much concentration needed mostly when I engage in the written art form.

They also rule because they don’t give me a headache like drawings do. I suck at drawing. I said that already, didn’t I? So whenever I try to draw, I get a headache, and fail miserably, and get angry as a result. But collages don’t involve any drawing. I just print out a bunch of awesome pics and put them together however they fit. It’s like a puzzle, only it rules harder.

So today, I made a collage for my metal zine. I printed out a bunch of photos and logos of bands I like, put them together in no particular pattern (as in, the logo doesn’t necessarily fit with the picture of the band it’s stuck on) and sprinkled a bunch of little metal horns all over. I’ll have to place it in the middle of the zine as it’s spread over two pages. It’s officially the biggest and most elaborate collage I’ve made in an A6-size zine (1/4 page size).

I love the way it looks, just as badass as I intended it to be.

I won’t post a picture of it here because I rather unveil it along with the completed zine.

Peace, love and paper art is totally where it’s at

 

ZineWriMo: Baby Zinester

I was sick yesterday, so I didn’t do anything. I didn’t go to work and slept most of the time. But I felt better later on in the day.

I picked my daughter up from daycare and during a momentary lapse of my attention, she stole one of my mini-zine blanks. So I let her have it and gave her her set of markers. She’s a week away from being 2 years old and she made her very first zine yesterday!

In fact, she loved it so much, she asked me to make another blank for her. So I showed her how to do it, making sure that she knows the cutting part is something that only mommy does and she’s not allowed to use scissors. She scribbled all over the place and got some marker ink on the table, but it was such a treat for me to watch her having so much fun with it!

So I guess that was my activity for yesterday: teaching my daughter about zines and making one with her. Welcome to the zinester community, my lovely baby girl!

Peace, love and snails and turtles

ZineWriMo: ZineAmmo

Today, I sat down at the office with my zine-tools photos to my right, my mini zine blank to my left, a gluestick and a pair of scissors alongside my color pens and Sharpie all around my keyboard.

This is my zone. My happy place. Right in the middle of all my zine tools, making some zine magic. True, it’s no more than a mini zine for today, but sometimes reveling in these little pleasures is all it takes. Seeing as most of my time is spent changing diapers, doing laundry, washing dishes and raising my kid (the latter which I greatly enjoy nonetheless), managing to escape the routine with some artivism is definitely not something I take for granted.

I started laying out my zine-tools mini zine with the pictures my husband finally printed for me. I just need to add some text captions for the photos and I’m done. I want to write these captions on my typewriter, so that needs to be done at home. I’ll finish it up today.

I called it “Zine Ammo”. I see zine-making as a means to fight the system through art, and these tools may as well be weapons of mass creation. I once made a pin for the Boston Zine Fest with a sketch of my pen and the tagline “My Weapen” on it. Quite the appropriate pun.

As an update to my anti-Murphy’s Law rant yesterday, it turns out we may very well have a babysitter for metal night on November 18th! My mother-in-law agreed to look after my daughter on that night, and I shall be writing my Sunday Metal Night piece at the bar, after all. How exciting!!!

Peace, love and DIY til I fucking die!

 

ZineWriMo: Planning for Nothing

ZineWriMo Day 9 was to write a mini-zine full of words. That was basically what I did on Day 8 with the stream of consciousness writing. The mini zine has no photos, just words, words and more words. And since it was Friday, I did nothing.

ZineWriMo Day 10 was a Sabbath and I didn’t organize my zine goodies as they were pretty much already where they should be – locked away in a cupboard where my daughter couldn’t get to it.

For today, Day 11 (showing off my zine tools), I had two things planned, but Murphy and his godforsaken Law got in the way, yet again. And this time, twice in a single day.

I planned to make a mini zine with full-color photos of my zine tools. I shot the photos on Thursday so that I can have them printed and ready for today. I emailed them to my husband (who works at a print shop and takes care of all my printing needs) but he missed that email and didn’t print them. So making a mini zine of zine tools will not happen today. Hopefully, tomorrow, lest Murphy decides to have his way again and makes me his bitch.

I also planned to go to metal night tonight and asked my mom to clear her schedule so she can come over tonight and babysit my daughter, while my husband and I go to the bar. But then, metal night was postponed to the 18th of the month, and my mom is still coming over tonight. So it happens that tonight we have a babysitter and no metal night, and on the 18th we have metal night and no sitter.

I wanted to add a segment about Jerusalem’s Sunday Metal Night on my WIP zine for this month, and I will, but unfortunately, it won’t start with “I am now at Blaze Bar, writing this while wholesome face-melting metal tunes are blasting through the speakers.”

*Sigh*

Unless Murphy makes my computer crash and my pen run out of ink, the only thing I have left to do today is to continue working on my WIP zine. So yeah, I’ll get back to that now.

Peace, love and one of these days, I’ll murder the fucker.

ZineWriMo: Stream Writing

I’m not entirely sure what stream of consciousness writing is, but I think it’s something I used to do a lot in school and also the style I use when I write my post-its zine End of Words. I call that free writing. Writing absolutely anything that comes to mind, made up of a bunch of nonsensical, fragmented sentences and sometimes even gibberish.

Anyway, whether that’s what stream of consciousness is or not, that’s what I did today. Freewriting. A mini zine that took me about 10 minutes to write and another five to make a cover. Reading back what I wrote, it doesn’t seem to be all that nonsensical. It’s about how words are meaningless but sometimes using them is the only way we can prove to ourselves that we exist. It’s rather morbid but I end on a positive note referring to words as my life-support.

I called the mini “Sniffing Flatlines” whatever that means.

I’ll be making copies and give it out with zine trades and sales, as always.

Peace, love and comatose

ZineWriMo: Dream up the Zine

Is it silly that I’ve been working on this color mini zine up until this morning and that I finally finished it just now? I don’t think mini zines should be too difficult to make so for the next ones I’ll be making this month, I’ll make them super simple and super easy. I want to spend more time on my WIP zine anyway.

Yesterday’s activity was creating a zine idea book. When I first read the list of prompts, I didn’t even understand what this meant. But I’m pretty sure I already have something like that. Any ideas or plans I have, I write in my diary right alongside journal entries and grocery lists. Sometimes I also set up a calendar on Word, print it out and stick it in the diary. Also, I did the brainstorming activity of the first day of ZineWriMo by writing the list in the diary. So yeah, I guess that’s my zine idea book. and it looks like this:

Pretty fucking rad!

But yes, until this morning, I was all colored out with the mini zine. I’ll print a few copies of it and give it out with zine trades and purchases.

Today’s activity is working on the work in progress. Which I will get to right now!

Peace, love and typewriter ribbon