A tyvek envelope containing 10 handmade zines jam packed with goodies, articles and creative inspiration!

Going through my pile of zines, again and again.

I participated in an annual zine swap set up by Alma Stoller called I ♥ zines last year. I got a whole package of zines in the beginning of February this year (quite late but totally okay with me). All of them are just super cool, creative and wild. I had such fun reading through them, taking out the little gifts and finding inspiration. I couldn’t just file them away in my drawer so I thought I’d share some photos and thoughts about each one with you guys.

I got all of these in the zine swap. I’m a smart girl for signing up.

Maybe you’ll be inspired to make a zine on your own or together with a few friends, or maybe buy a few zines on etsy? There are so many yummy issues to pick from. Or why not make a wove to sign up for the swap next autumn. Now is the time to start planning your zine, writing articles, collecting images and ideas, dreaming it up.

There were two themes in my pile, non of them craft related. The first theme is Mail Art (sending letters, postcards, writing messages etc), and the other one is Art Making (creativity, art journals, mixed media, gesso). We’ll start with the mail inspired zines today!

Later posts will be about:

* Art Zines I got in the swap
* The zine I made
* How I made my zine

Mail Art Zines

The zine 50 ways has a extremely cool yarn tassel (that I’m going to nick for one of my notebooks) and it is made by Pam. The theme is 50 ways to alter a postcard, and it’s made out of altered postcards spiral bound into a unique zine, with many creative suggestions on how to recycle postcards you’ve gotten, collected or saved. It’s fun to make them your own, maybe more whimsical by using stickers, sewing, cutting, adding a quote clipped from a magazine, modify a face etc etc. Love all the ideas in this one!

The Stationary & Envelopes Zine with a Note Conversation is a joint effort made by Lisa and Shalene. It is made out of textbook pages and envelopes where you will find little notes and envelope ideas etc., it does not have much magazine content (articles etc) but looking through it is like having a sample of an artists sketchbook, including dangling flaps, sewn in paper leafs, a small watercolour painting, photocopied doodles to use as stationary, chunky glitter and handwritten messages! Amazing little work of art. You can tell a lot of work went into each copy!

The zine called “Greetings”, also spiral bound, is made by Emily. It’s about the history of greeting cards, how we can use them and how to make our own personal cards. Included inside were buttons and little packages of lace to use on your own projects. Neat idea for a zine! Emily did not include a blog url or a e-mail address in her zine, and I think it’s quite sad that I can’t let her know that I got her zine and enjoyed it.

Lesson to learn here: always include your email address when you send something out! Please. In the DIY Postcard Swap I arranged there were many people who did not include any contact information on their cards. It actually makes some recipients sad that they can’t thank the card maker personally. Other recipients might not take the time to write a note to say thank you, but I think it’s best to always include the information just in case…

Some of the “extras” (stuff to play with) found inside each zine.

More zines tomorrow!

Only cat lovers know the luxury of fur-coated, musical hot water bottles that never go cold.
/Susanne Millen

I have the privilege to share bed with this one beautiful cat lady. As a crafty blogger I feel it is my duty to share her with you all, hoping you know the joys of having an animal in your life, or that you one day will. I can’t remember who said it but it’s true that once there is a cat in the room there is no need for any additional interior design. Since it was a while since you saw new photos of miss Smilla I thought I’d share these today, where she is resting on my bed. Quite shabby chic if you ask me…

Yawn! Can you go do something else now Hanna?

Just one more, from above, okay?

Inspired by Jodi’s very cool cat photos taken from above. Love how the back-light created a cat shadow on the bed in this one. Love these duvet covers. Love this cat. Love shabby chic. Love having a bed to sleep in.

You are an artist, if you want to be one.

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Dear, dear diary, I want to tell my secrets
Cuz you’re the only one that I know who’ll keep them
Dear, dear diary, I want to tell my secrets
I know you’ll keep them, and this is what I’ve done […]

I’ve been down every road you could go
I made some bad choices as you know
Seems I’ve got this whole world cradled in my hands
But its just like me not to understand…
/Pink

Scanned collage pages from my own Dear Diary where I write Morning Pages and Stupid Repeating Thoughts all the time. And glue stuff in. :-)

Pink and yellow goes great together, it just says spring to me.

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Vision is the art of seeing the invisible.
/Jonathan Swift

Wow, I’ve created my first vision board, or dreamboard, that’s what Jamie Ridler calls them. I’ve been thinking about doing one for quite a while now but not sure why… What do I need one for? Now finally I just did one, as I’m slowly going through a big pile of magazines, cleaning out ephemera and sorting papers. I put on some good music, went through magazines and cut out some images that spoke to me. Is this my dream? My vision of the future? My hope of a better life? Yes, and no.

When you look at it, what do thoughts do you get? What do I dream of? Have you ever tried creating a dreamboard like this? Was it like an affirmation, a visual aid or a dream that became clearer? I’m not sure about mine yet.

When I made it I got a bit worried, maybe it was the mood that night… I was afraid I would forget something, leave something out - like this was a spell that would come true, a prophecy that would happen and I could not leave anything out! Like if I didn’t glue in this or that I would never have those things… A stupid and strange feeling. Maybe a fear of visualizing ones dreams.

Now that I look at it I think that most of the things there I already have! My cat, my self, my yoga for example. So my dream might be to refine and have more of the things I see in this visionboard collage? And to get to a place where I can grow. Now when I look at it, as I’ve hung it over the desk, I see a couple of different things that makes me think about longing…

Dreamboard thinking…

• I long for big windows and more light, and greenery
• I long for writing - and to own a typewriter
• I long for spring and flowers on the table
• I long to live like a grown-up and still include time for play
• My body longs for more yoga and lovely stretching
• I long for new clothes, pretty skirts and polka dot sweaters
• I long for white walls and room to hang my own art
• I long to create more wall-hanging art
• I long for a in-flow of money
• I long for reading and giving gifts
• I’m drawn to a simple country style
• I want to give myself permission to use my favorite tools (words, paint brush, sewing machine, pens, paper) to find my own style and develop as a human being through creativity
• I long for music in my life
• I long to have more alone time and space around me

My collage is quite big so I’ve also included some close-up photos if you want a closer look!?

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Nature and Man are both anarchic and rebellious; each can create revolution in its own way! Colour, both natural and synthetic, is no exception and you will soon find that by adopting an experimental approach you will reveal some unusual and exciting functions of colour.
/Julia Caprara

Every time I start reading in Exploring colour (experimental approaches to colour and stitch with Julia Caprara) I just want to close it, jump up and start collecting colors in a notebooks! I don’t know why, but there is something magic with how Julia Caprara presents the exercises in the book that just gets me going. I guess it has a few explanations, one being that I already love collecting colors and filling notebooks, I just didn’t knew I collected colors and didn’t do it with any special intention earlier…

The books target audience is embroiderers and textile artists, but I think you can use it what ever art form you’re in to right now. There is a chapter on colour theory where Caprara talks about colour harmony, the complimentary colour contrasts as well as primary and secondary colors, tints and tones and how we can combine colors in different ways.

My favorite part of the book is “the assignments” that you get along the way, and of course the yummy images of pastel crayons, embroidery close-ups and open sketchbooks. The images are beautiful and the assignments are written in a way that I can’t resist them. They are all fun exercises, the first one for example is to get a small notebook and start collecting colours within one colour family in it! I’ve already started one, and I’m having so much fun just seeing my colour everywhere. I choose pink for my first colour sketchbook…

Caprara suggests using oil pastel crayons, coloured pencils, watercolours, scraps of paper, bits of fabric and yarn etc. and gluing it into your sketchbook as you collect your colour. She writes:

“Be prepared to be experimental and inventive, and take note about how you feel when you work with different materials.”

She suggests that you examine how different hues goes together and also how other colors work with your colour family. When you write notes in your journal collection you will see how it comes alive, and years later you can return to it and remember your discoveries. Caprara gives lots of suggestions on how you can enhance your collection, narrow it down or widen it, collect around words or poems or sketch from nature.

Later in the book Caprara has even more fun assignments, and in the later half of the book she describes how we can paint with stitch, experiment with different embroidery techniques and use the colour collections in our fabric design. There are suggestions and ideas in this book to keep a full time artist busy for a year or two, but collecting colours and experimenting with them is a life project. You can tell Caprara has taught many inspirational workshops in her life when you read her book. I will take this book down many many times form the book shelf to get inspirational infusions and new colour combination ideas. I’ve already read it three times now!

Get the book

You can buy the book Exploring Colour (with Julia Caprara: Experimental Approaches to Colour and Stitch) second hand at amazon or directly from the publisher d4Daisy where I got mine!

English textile artist Julia Caprara was the director and principal of Opus School of Textile Art that she started together with her husband Alex. Julia Caprara sadly died in 2008. I really like Caprara’s style and would love to read her other book The Magic of Embroidery (1993) but it is not available at amazon, so I guess ebay will be the place to look for it.

You can get this Caprara book from her publisher D4Daisy though, it’s run by Maggie Grey. She publishes lots of cool books on mixed media and textile experimenting!

Stitches, straps and layers

I’ve also read Maggie Grey’s own most recent book called Stitches, Straps & Layers (2009). It’s a beautiful book with lots of extremely yummy and very layered images of fabric surfaces. In the book the aim is to build textiles from the bottom up and recycle the materials you already own as much as possible.

I love the photos but can’t really say I’ve been inspired to do anything in the book (yet). Oh except maybe when I was sewing paper strips on the sewing machine? Now that I think about it I guess I was inspired by the straps in this book! The biggest reason I haven’t dived into making projects from the book is because I don’t own the things required, like abaca paper, vanishing muslin, foil, misty fuse, carrier rods, paintsticks, puff paint, adirondack paint or even a heat setting tool! What, you say, you don’t own any of these things? It feels kind of strange to have to buy quite a few new stuff as the book says it’s all about recycling! With that philosophy in mind I would have thought I could at least try to start experimenting, but I can’t do any of the projects with what I own… :-( I wish I had more money. Always.

If you’ve got some experience in mixed media fabric art though (and own some foil and other fun materials), I think you’ll want to explore the projects and ideas in this book.

Oh, by the way - you can find very cool Free tutorials (downloadable PDF-files to print) at another of Maggie’s sites! I love these pdf’s and I’ve downloaded all of them! Check them out.

10×2 postcards in a pile….

Both my mom and I went with roses for our postcards. Who can resist the look and feel or roses, even if they are only 2D? And we both went ahead and sewed in papers, though I added paper to fabric and mom added fabric to paper… Mom’s postcards are romantic pink roses in shear fabric, mine are cut out illustrations from a book on a base of paper cloth as you saw in yesterdays post.

She sew her fabric in place using the sewing machine, in a free form embroidery style, and then added decorative borders that her sewing machine has around the edges of all her postcards. Beautiful, right? Quite shabby chic if you ask me!

I told her any artist should sign their work, and so she did. I’m so happy she wanted to be apart of the swap.

Two of her postcards that I scanned in for her. You can view the rest in the Postcard group on flickr. :-)