Sunday, July 22, 2012

International Zine Month Check In

How's your zine month going?  I loved the 31 Days of IZM list that came out at the end of June and though I would participate in it as much as I could. Well, I haven't done as much as I wnated, but I look at it every day to check in.

Here's what I have done.

Day 4 was teach yourself a new skill.

I was already working in a mini zine at the time, so that qualifies. I made a 1/16th zine that goes into a little handmade box. This zine will be sold in the IPRC Zine Machine, but I'll also have copies at the Portland Zine Symposium. Here is a shot of the zine while I was working on it. I will post more once I get them all assembled.


Day 6 was reread a favorite zine

For this day I opened up my box of zines from the last symposium near my bed and reread the first two on top. I have terrible retention and sadly I could probably reread the same 1000 items over and over for life. 

Day 7 was zine reading day.

I read my current zine out loud to myself and pretended to be reading it to a group. Reading your stuff out loud is  good way to find problems with flow or repetitive words.  When I read it out loud on this day I wished I would have done before I printed some. I totally found problems.

Day 9 was make envelopes, postcards or buy stamps.

I bought stamps. I needed some standard first class letter stamps. Some stamps are so pretty. Like any office supply and paper geek I enjoy buying them. I got a few designs, including these Kansas ones that I liked.

A bunch of days got a way from me....
Day 22 is today and the item for today is to add or edit an entry on Zine Wiki. I thought everything on Zine Wiki was up to date for me, but when I looked at it again today I saw that I had nothing for my zine Imaginary Life. I added information about that zine and did a couple up dates. You can see my profile here. Check out Zine Wiki today and add your zine or a zine you like that isn't represented. It's a great resource.

So, here's to about 9 more days of Zine Month. I will hopefully partake in a few more things on the list.

I can't believe the symposium is so soon, I have a lot to do to get ready for it and yet I'm not really doing it. I hope my motivation kicks in soon!

If you want to see what other people are doing for IZM check out the blog posts on We Make Zines.





Friday, July 6, 2012

Vintage Color Palettes - Souvenir from Sea Shore


This is one of my favorite vintage postcards in my collection. The shell images and lettering are raised and it's even prettier in person. This is a lovely pastel summery color palette. 

The Hex codes for these colors are in order of left to right: bcca89, c1d9db, e1af7e, e19aa5

Monday, July 2, 2012

31 Days of Zines

July is International Zine Month and the folks at IZM created this cool list of zine appreciation things you can do each day of the month. I'm gonna try and do as many as I can. Here's a picture of it on my magnetic board, so everyday I can check it.





Tomorrow's suggestion is to organize your zine collection. Um, yeah, I'm not doing that. It would take days and a huge mess to find all the boxes squirreled away and to organize them.

Today's zine activity is Zine Distro Appreciation Day and I will totally take part in that.

Zine Distros are mostly singular people who start a zine business for the love of zines and want to share their favorite zines. They buy or take zines on consignment and create their own websites, table at shows and events and do their own marketing. It is definitely done for love and not money. As a zine creator it is super awesome when a distro wants to carry your zine.

I'm not very good at getting mine out to distros. I'm always running out of copies of zines and I take a long time to get to the copy store. But, here are some awesome distros that do carry my zines and lots of other great zines. Thanks so much, folks for existing and supporting zines (and me)!

Sweet Candy Distro - Sage is going to blog everyday of Zine Month. Check out her blog or like SCD on Facebook to keep up with posts.

Ms Valerie Park Distro

Things You Say Distro

Doris Distro

Parcell Press

Microcosm Publishing

I hope I didn't forget any distros that carry my zine. There is a huge list of distros available here, including distros outside the U.S.

Happy International Zine Month!


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