Sunday, January 20, 2013

My First Zine! Inspired by KarenAnn Young!

Happy Sunday evening folks...Hope it finds you doing well.
Past couple of days have been loaded with some busy artful things..putting together Valentine packages..did a live chat with April Cole today and made a super cute stuffed paper heart..wills hare that image in a bit...and today I was so incredibly happy to take my first ever zine to print! Pleased with the outcome...While I have no desire at this point in my life to try to sell zines..I do have a strong desire to give credit for this to two people really first my sister who introduced me to Zines many moons ago..she had one she kept up with regularly and it was amazing..her collage and art work were incredible but at the time I was a full-time mom and full time college student and that made for very little time do make a Zine and figure out its layout and not only that but I didn't have the money it would have required at that time in my life to print in full color which is what I thought I had to do...and then..one of my very BEST friends in the world and fellow multifaceted Ms. Karen Ann Young sent me a small zine she made and it blew me away not only was it just eye catching from the second I opened it...it was just amazing...her collage work surpasses much I've seen out there and she is so good at doing things like layouts and figuring out measurements and such I love her!! So Karen Ann thank you so much for inspiring me and sharing you fantastic work with me. She made me see that a black and white one CAN be intriguing and pleasing to the eye..hope mine is to yours as hers was to mine! I love you Karen! 
Please check out her blog and work online!

Here is my work in progress..
Not the best photo but an image of me working on this design digitally

I have mixed feelings about the whole had done opposed to making one digitally.
Both to me have their qualities/ advantages and disadvantages.
Some include but are certainly not limited to:
Hand Made: 
A lot of work to cut out and collage bits and pieces together.
Takes a great deal of patience and imagination.
Limited in ability to manipulate cause everything is glued down. 
Harder to fix errors.
Takes a very creative talented person to make an effective interesting hand made Zine.
Digital:
Have to have the programs and knowledge of using them to do it.
Measurements have to be exact a mistake could ruin it all.
As I found out last night, after 4.5 hours of non-stop work on mine my computer crashed and I lost the entire thing. You would think I've learned the lesson of saving work often but noooo...apparently not. This was a huge reminder. Digital is not easier, less messy, and has a great deal of possibilities for speed, variety in brushes, textures, shapes, font and the like...but it can be gone if something happens to your computer.
Feel free to add to this list I'm sure I am not getting to every aspect of advantages and disadvantages to both methods.
This was my half way point...may have made many changes to this in the final version...

 Flattened and saved as a PDF for print...here is the final layout for this one page booklet Zine.

I love the cover so much which is rare...I am my own worst critic..i saved a copy of just it for print.
Final print on matte cardstock...VERY happy with the printed copy..
Final prints and fold..


so with this...my only intention was to make sure I really could pull one off and the prints will be for friends and certainly Karen Ann who inspired it to begin with! :) Keep an eye out on the snail mail friend..and we will see if I am moved to make more in the future. 

Tonight I joined a live chat with April Cole as previously mentioned. Thank you April for the super big fun chatting, sharing and learning..we made stuffed paper bag hearts and it was a blast she got me to step outside of my comfort one with color and paint..I tend to be a child of darkness and stick far more so to earth tones and black lol i do love color and use it, but when it comes to paint it is just not my fote but this little sucker came out super cute! Thank you my dear friend..I love you as well and am ALWAYS inspired by you too!! 
April Cole is also a best friend and mixed media artist and her blog is lots of fun too! Check her out here! http://aprilmariecole.blogspot.com/
And here is a link to April Cole's Facebook Art Group April Cole's The Studio A Thriving Artist Community where she does some great challenges and live chat sessions!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheStudioAprilCole/ 

Here is my stuffed heart I made with her today!


Cute right!!?? Love it...
And also on my art table some goodies for my pals for Valentine's Day...epic find on pinterest that I added my own mojo to...


And so you can see I making progress artistically with my days off..and just think I'm off tomorrow..
witchy giggle lol 
I think I can get use to my new schedule of Monday's off...Saturday's are an exchange for that but they are short days and not too grueling..
catch you tomorrow with some more goodies! Tata for now cherrios! 
Make ART not WAR

4 comments:

  1. Aww... ALL THIS ARTSY GOODNESS, MAKES ME HAPPY!!~xx
    Love ya' gal.

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  2. Where did my comment go? Well, I've got to remember to copy my posts in case they get lost in cyberspace!!! What I said before was the your zine looks awesome!!! Cut and paste is the way for me because digital stuff is way too hard for me. Love the paper hearts that you made!!! I feel like making some instead of going out for inspiration, all I need is a keyboard and great artists like you and April!!! Thanks for sharing!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for stopping by Karen! Thank you too for you compliments..you were the inspiration behind it so if it looks good its because of you :)

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