For International Zine Month

I made a zine, once. I didn’t distribute it. So I’m the only one who knows about it. But, the process was fun. Before I had a computer I hand wrote the contents, doodled and cut and pasted the rest. Then put my pages together with a cover. It was about the paranormal and the unexplained. I don’t have it now. Sometime during many moves from one town to another city, it disappeared. I’d do it again. It was a great way to be free with my creativity.

July is International Zine Month  (Facebook) – Set up a zine reading, a zine swap, a cut and paste party, a zine fest, or even a simple zine workshop at your local library or community center. Write a letter to every zine you read, leave your zine at random places around town like buses, bathrooms or universities. Order zines directly from the creator, make a shirt with iron on letters that says “ask me about zines”, make buttons with phrases like “zines saved my life” or “do you read zines”. Send out zine fliers with your mail or leave them around your town. Approach shops in your town about carrying zines, donate to zine libraries…..

Resources:

24 Hour Zine Thing

WikiBooks: Zine Making

Zine Wiki

Love Letters to Irony

Nobody Cares About your Stupid Zine Podcast

We Make Zines

Overglued

Broken Pencil

CanZine

Zine World

Google Groups: alt.zines

Sticky Institute

Flickr: Art Zines

Flickr: Zinesters

Flickr: Illustrated Zines

Yahoo Groups: Zine Geeks

Independent Publishing Resource Center

Live Journal: Zinesters

Live Journal: Zine Scene

Zine Mobile

The Book of Zines

The Paper Trail Interview Series (On hiatus?)

Asking for Trouble

Zine Library

Toronto Zine Library

Zines for Lunch

Robert Street: Anchor Archive Zine Library

Arrow Archive

These Things That People Make

Zine Dream

Facebook: Fanzines

DIY Bookbinding

E-Zinez: The Handbook of Ezine Publishing

Write a Minute Film

Hint Fiction, The Film

You have a camera.
You have a crew.
You have actors.
You have 25 words.
You have 1 minute.
Do you have what it takes?

Write and film a minute long movie based on the short stories selected on the site. Further details will appear in August when they are open for submissions.

Note – Hint fiction (n) : a story of 25 words or fewer that suggests a larger, more complex story.

Live: From the Surface of Mylife

From Calpurnius:

A few years ago I shot a series of photos called LIVE: From the Surface of Mylife. They were simple scenes shot within my day at close range and composed as if they were taken from a NASA expedition.

In honor of Atlantis’ last expedition in orbit, I present LIVE: From the Surface of Mylife.

What will you photograph for your own Live: From the Surface of Mylife?

Ubiquitous Photography

Do you use your digital camera or your camera phone to take a picture of something you want to remember, instead of writing the information down? I have been doing this more often. I think it started when I was in a bookstore with my Mother. She wanted me to write down the name of a plant from a magazine. There was a photo of the plant as well. I got out the digi camera and took a close up so she could have the photo and the name too.

Since then I’ve used it to take photos of real estate signs on properties for sale which might be of interest to my brother. He buys, fixes them up and then sells them again. He is looking for a farm property which he would keep and I see many of them as I road trip along, looking for abandoned and derelict houses.

I also use the digi camera to take notes for me when I find a quote in a book, an author’s name on a book I’m too over budget to buy, and I’ve photographed something to remind myself of the idea it gave me when I saw it. Like seeing an old doll at a thrift store. Later I wrote about the doll and ended up using my photo as an illustration along with it.

Others are doing it. Some more practical than I am, using it to plan and organize things, like a collection of business cards. There are good ideas to be found. Read on…

The Ubiquitous Camera Phone

Recent studies report that a majority of people who use their camera phones use them for ubiquitous purposes such as remembering a parking space or notes on a blackboard.

Lifehacker: Geek to Live: Develop your (Digital) Photographic Memory
Lifehacker: Use your Cameraphone as a Visual To-Do List
GeekSugar: Use your Camera Phone to get Organized

The Sketchbook Project World Tour 2012

Read more about The Sketchbook Project World Tour 2012 on their site.  It’s for visual artists to contribute and eventually the sketchbooks will be exhibited in the Brooklyn (US) Art Library.

There are a list of topics to choose from to use as inspiration for your illustration. Which would you pick (to write about or) illustrate?

  • I remember you
  • The last of the people I know
  • In fifty years
  • Ask me how I can help
  • The first ever…
  • Hope
  • In 10 minutes
  • Along the line
  • Grey side of life
  • Fill me with stories
  • Things found under car seats
  • Untitled
  • Travel with me
  • Forever in a nutshell
  • Disasters
  • This is a sketchbook
  • The worst story ever told
  • Fears and tears
  • The companion books
  • Transatlantic
  • It’s summer where you are
  • It’s winter where you are
  • Nothing new
  • Time Traveler
  • Opposite day
  • Uncharted waters
  • Life underground
  • Monochromatic
  • Long trips and short phone calls
  • Encyclopedia of
  • Sandwich
  • Prehistoric
  • Writing on the wall
  • A path through the trees
  • Stitches and folds
  • Heroes and villains
  • Treehouse
  • Forks and Spoons
  • Waterslides I never rode

30 Day Photography Challenge

White Peach Photography has the 30 Day Photography Challenge.

In writing we build the picture with words. Illustrating, with a photograph, drawing or some other form of visual art is usually saved for children’s book and non-fiction. Except for book covers which have illustrations geared more to selling the book than sharing the writer’s vision of the story inside. Kind of nice to become the illustrator yourself. Illustrate your own story, your personal story, with the steps in the 30 Day Challenge. Be creative without using words.

See also the Flickr group for the event.

  • Day 1: Self-portrait
  • Day 2: What you wore today
  • Day 3: Clouds
  • Day 4: Something green
  • Day 5: From a high angle
  • Day 6: From a low angle
  • Day 7: Fruit
  • Day 8: A bad habit
  • Day 9: Someone you love
  • Day 10: Childhood memory
  • Day 11: Something blue
  • Day 12: Sunset
  • Day 13: Yourself with 13 things
  • Day 14: Eyes
  • Day 15: Silhouette
  • Day 16: Long exposure
  • Day 17: Technology
  • Day 18: Your shoes
  • Day 19: Something orange
  • Day 20: Bokeh
  • Day 21: Faceless self-portrait
  • Day 22: Hands
  • Day 23: Sunflare
  • Day 24: Animal
  • Day 25: Something pink
  • Day 26: Close-up
  • Day 27: From a distance
  • Day 28: Flowers
  • Day 29: Black and white
  • Day 30: Self-portrait

Chrome Daisy

There’s a Lady Gaga theme on Facebook games ( a few of them) now. I had never heard of her until my Mom came back from Florida and was talking about her last year. Mom likes to was the American Idol show and Lady Gaga was on there as well. She’s younger than I thought. Anyway, I liked the idea of shiny, chrome daisies when I saw them come up with the new stuff on Facebook. Daisies are nice in all kinds of designs. I especially like them done in blue and white. Chrome would be pretty too, more glamorous than pretty maybe.

I also found that you can get chrome daisy styled tail light covers if you have a VW Beetle car. That would be pretty cute. Though they would suit the head lights better, since they could be white then instead of red. But, it could be less than safe to have anything partially covering your head lights.