Zine it.

My habit of making things lately has been to start with whatever supply is floating at the top of the piles of stuff on my worktable - or whatever's dug out from under the piles after cleaning up. Yesterday, the random supplies "discovered" were palette papers from recent paint sessions in an art journal I'm working on. Those palette papers got turned into zines.

I've made zines a few times in the past few years and I'm getting more comfortable making them. I always make them based on my artwork and each one has required at least some digital processing. The last one was created all digital, using images of ATCs I'd made. This time I tried something new and made hard-copy zines using the palette papers.

The plan was to make the one sheet, 8-page mini zine. Usually this calls for an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper, but the palette papers were 9" x 12" so the zines are slightly bigger. The papers themselves were not fully covered in paint - usually I use palette papers until they are completely covered. I decided to keep it minimal across the board by only adding a few collage images, rubber stamps and some clipped words from a booklet to the pages.

The words were from a short self-help booklet on leadership that I got from a free book box.

I clipped the good action words/phrases that popped out at me.

Then it was just a matter of fiddling around with images and random word combinations until I had 3 finished zines.

Ta-da!

I like them. They're definitely different from the ones I've made in the past.

[They're different from pretty much everything I make, actually.]

From "below the surface"...

I kind of did whatever with the words. Eh.

I tried to make them make sense, but I wasn't too fussed about it.

From "where you want to be"...

This palette paper had the most paint coverage of the 3.

It was giving me a feminine sort of vibe so I ran with it.

From "a picture in our minds"...

 This one was the first one I finished and my favorite. It gave me the great idea to make zines the next Mail Pals swap.

This method vs. digital has its pros/cons, but I'd probably make zines like this again.

Until next time...

stay cool.

Tag, you're it.

Today I was searching for an example of one project, but found an example of another project and made it. That's what happens when you've got a clean worktable and are waiting on laundry to finish. What was the project? A shipping tag art journal - or glue book, whatever. [Sidenote: are you as tired as I am of "properly" identifying the projects you make?]

I used 4 manila shipping tags because I wanted to make a collaged accordion fold book and just happened to grab 4 tags from the drawer. They're size 5 shipping tags. I taped them together with masking tape, leaving a tiny space between each for ease of folding. For collage materials, I decided this was the perfect project for the recycled mail art scraps I've collected; colorful parts of envelopes, packaging, notecard parts, cancelled stamps, collage pieces. 

No rhyme or reason, just pick something, glue it, stick it down.

Papers were overlapped across tags to reinforce the connection.

After the front side was complete, I attached a closure.

Accordion fold books need help staying closed.

I stapled a generous length of baker's twine to the front that will wrap around a few times and tie nicely. Then I did the same style of collage to the back as I did the front.

When it was done, I chose some likely strings and things for the holes. Because they're there, so why not.

Ta-da!

Collage art book thing.

Toodles.