Every week I ponder my role as a "content creator". I have a notebook dedicated to this aspect of my job where I scribble ideas for future videos and posts for Hive. I really do enjoy sharing online and am grateful to be compensated for all the effort I pour into this digital project.
There are days when my confidence waivers. After spending hours & hours working on a video that only gets a handful of views. After curating photos and words that gets very few votes. After a power outage leaves me unable to use the internet in anyway.
In moments like these I return to a more physical form of creation: making zines!
And, fortunately, I got some positive news. A family member of mine will be able to, once again, handle the shipping for my little zine shop. Due to her previous unavailability, I had to really cut back on the physical media I offer there and, it seems, that phase is over.
During this era I had just one, small zine for sale on my shop to make it easier on my helper. All she had to do was address the envelope, slap on a stamp, and drop it in the outgoing mail. Now though, she will be working for home, a bit less than full time and is willing to help me send out a bit of a wider selection of my physical art.
Excited by this news, and eager to embrace another aspect of my work as a content creator, I went through my catalog of past zines to see which I want to add to my Etsy shop. I decided to start with a totally handwritten zine about using herbs in witchcraft. In previous prints I tried to make this zine as small as possible in order to save on postage. But, sizing down really didn't work. The text was too small to read comfortably and the images lost a lot of their charm. So, I spent a few hours this weekend editing the original copy on photopea (the linux version of photoshop).
And here it is! I printed out a single test booklet and everything looks good. I actually plan to add a few extras to make this edition unique. Maybe a postcard, or some small portrait ... definitely a bookmark with ideas for a spell using herbs.
This morning I mused on this idea in my content creation notebook. Maybe a list of herbs that I find to be useful in my own magical practice could be nice.
I plan to print about thirty copies of this booklet, and a few dozen of two more that I am particularly proud of. Over the 10 + years I have been creating zines I have a few that I feel are worth being publicized. It seems important to me to keep the craft of creating physical art alive in my own way.