Zines are for the people !

What's a zine (pronounced zeen) you ask ? It's a hand-made, self-published book. Small, big, short, verbose, zines can be made by anyone who can yeild a pen and has something to say. On September 10th, Olenka, Marichka and friends showed intrigued attendees at MakerExpo 2016 in Kitchener, Ontario how to make their very own zines. As with our other workshops, it's exciting to give people general instructions and a lot of tools and see what they come up with. Participants opted to decorate their zines with stamps, papercuts and colourful embroidery floss and stationery. My favourite novice zinester was a 9 year old girl who told us she would use her new book to jot down "Harry Potter Facts". Whatever gets your goat girrrrl. 

Coincidentally, kosa has been making zines for years, using them as a cheap means of distributing song lyrics for weddings and koliada and as part of the Shelter Valley Folk Festival artists' village. Simple and accessible....zines are debatably a folk art. Zines are for the people !