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Young Explorer have been all over the place recently. You probably haven't been able to go a single day without someone saying 'Have you heard about Young Explorer?!'. In case you have been living in a cave for the last three months and haven't caught 'Young Explorer Fever', here's a little summary of some things that we've been in.

Firstly, we did some talking for a bit about Victoria Baths Zine Fair in which I used a 'mild curse word'. Then we did some talking (And posed for some photos) for the Fred Aldous blog. Here's some of the ace photos that Elle took on the day:

And finally, our friend Stef Bradley (Who we must have mentioned about a hundred times on this blog now) included a little interview with us for a zine she was making for a zine workshop. As well as making the excellent Today Zine, Stef has recently started her own zine distro called 'Best Pressed', selling zines by other people she likes at gigs and other events. We're going to put a few of the 'How to make a zine' zines on the shelves at Salford Zine Library, so pop over and have a look if you get the chance. They're really good and have loads of really good tips on how to make your own zines. And some bonus exclusive Stef Bradley comic material too! Here's a glimpse of our interview that has been described as 'inspiring' and 'really great' by no-one.

If your famous blog/magazine/newspaper/television series wants to talk to us, get in touch! You can email us at youngexplorerzine at gmail dot com or tweet us @_YoungExplorer.

Bye!

S

Bradford Baked Zines

Last weekend we had a stall at the Victoria Baths Zine Fair in Manchester. We were sharing a table with the super cool Stef Bradley again (Go and see the Today Zine exhibition at Landbaby, Liverpool now!) and had the dead good Sugar Paper as next door neighbours too. Here's Liz and I looking dead chuffed to be there:

Even though she wasn't selling at the fair, we also managed to nab ourselves a copy of the excellent 2nd Hand Zine by Isobel Harrop and a badge to go with it! I would definitely recommend getting a copy of the zine (for 50p!) as soon as she makes them available to buy online, which will be soon, apparently. It's all about good places to go to buy second hand stuff and is both educational and fun.

Anyway, the gist of this post was supposed to be about Bradford Baked Zines and I'll start talking about that now, okay? While we were at the zine fair we got talking to Jean from Loosely Bound about the Bradford Baked Zines popup shop that's opening in an empty shop in Bradford between May 13th and 19th. We've sent along a big bundle of our zines so if you're in the area, pop over and have a look at all the ace self published stuff available to spend your money on.

As well as selling loads of cool stuff, they're also hosting some zine related events too. Our pal Natalie Bradbury, who does the Shrieking Violet zine, is doing a talk and so are loads of other people. All the events are free and are sure to be really interesting. I wish there was something like this in Manchester! Well done Bradford for sorting this out.

In other shop/retail related news, we're now selling mountain cushions at the brand new Nottingham Craft Mafia shop in, uh, Nottingham. We haven't been yet but, according to local sources, it is full of dead nice stuff. You can also have a look at our equally brand new 'stockists' page to see which irl places you can go in order to purchase things that we have made.

See yer!

S

Brrrrlin

At some point in the future we will probably make a zine about Berlin and how great it is. Until then, you will have to make do with this hastily put together blog post, complete with photos ripped from our Instagram. Nice one!

Firstly, we got back from Berlin about three weeks ago, so apologies if you have been on tenterhooks waiting for a blow-by-blow account of what we got up to. Here's some quick highlights for you! We stayed at an amazing place in the Neukölln area of the city. It's called Huettenpalast and is, basically, a big room full of vintage caravans and little cabins. We stayed in the Alter Palast, which means Old Palace if you're talking in German. Apparently. Here's a photo of it:

We did loads of touristy things, like hanging out with giant statues of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, casting our eye over Soviet architecture, eating amazing Currywurst, devouring traditional German stodge, cycling around the park and getting told off for asking for too many postage stamps in a souvenir shop.

We went to R.S.V.P, which is an amazing little stationery shop just outside the city centre. We went to the Museum of Things, which was pretty great. Row after row of cabinets of collections of everyday objects that, for some reason, was absolutely fascinating. If only we'd know about it when we were putting together the Collecting issue of the zine!

We'd read, in various places, about Spree Park, an abandoned theme park on the edge of the city. You can sometimes go on guided tours there, but sadly there weren't any running while we were in town. Some people off of the internet suggest climbing over the fence so that you can get a closer look, but we decided against that. We like the idea of urban exploration, but the prospect of being chased by German police/German Shepherd dogs/German security wasn't one we were particularly keen on. Instead we had a walk around the perimeter, where we got a fairly good view.

We did loads of other stuff that we will probably document in the zine when we get around to making it. You should definitely go to Berlin if you get the chance!

While we have your attention, we will be at the Victoria Baths Zine Fair on Sunday May 5th, so come and have a look at our stall! We're sharing with the supremely talented Stef Bradley again, so bring loads of cash. We're launching the new issue of our zine on Sunday too, which is all about food. Ace. Also, remember to come to the Internet Forever + Her Parents gig we're putting on at the end of May. It will be fun.

See yer!

S

What a Hoot!

We have a couple of zine/print fairs coming up at the end of the month. The first is at Manchester Art Gallery on the 31st of this month. It's free entry and there's all kind of other things going on, so it'll be worth popping along for an hour or so! What else are you going to do on a cold Thursday evening?

Then we're going to be at the second ever Inprint fair at the Shipping Forecast in Liverpool. That's on February 3rd and we're going to be sharing a table with the super duper Today Zine. The last one was really good (One of our favourite illustrators Caroline Dowsett was selling stuff, so we hope she's going to be there again this time!).

We've been dead busy recently so we haven't quite had the time to do another issue of Young Explorer. As a compromise, we've put together a mini owl-based zine called 'What a Hoot!'. You can have a look at it if you like. 

It's got some nice owl illustrations inside and some words that you can read and it's been hands stitched and that. I think we're going to be selling them for £1.50 or you'll be able to buy them with a set of four owl badges for £3. Bargain!

See yer!

S

Handmade Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone! We hope you had a dead nice Christmas Day and that the rest of the festive season is just as enjoyable for you. This year we made a conscious decision to try and buy a few more handmade Christmas presents than we have previously, so we thought we'd fill you in on the things we picked up. Sadly we were so impatient to get things wrapped up and ready for Christmas that we missed our chance to take photographs of them. As a result, all the photos in this post have been stolen from the internet.

We sold some things at the Inprint Fair in Liverpool at the start of December. We shared a stall with the amazing zine/comic maker Stef Bradley who we mentioned on here a while ago. She has an exciting new blog now which you should definitely have a look at.

One of the other sellers at the fair was Caroline Dowsett, who is pretty flipping great too. She does all kinds of neato illustrations and she is based here in Manchester. I bought one of these 'Murray Christmas' cards for Liz's mum from her. I'm not sure Liz's mum really knows who Bill Murray is, but her surname is Murray so I think she appreciated it on a different level. I also bought Liz a notepad with cats printed on the cover, which is also absolutely amazing.

When I got home I looked at Caroline's Etsy page and decided that Liz would probably also like a print of Woody Allen too. I had to stop myself from buying everything in her shop! If you like Bill Murray or Wes Anderson films, you should have a look IMMEDIATELY. You won't be disappointed.

After buying the cat notebook, I decided to get Liz some ace cat tattoos that she'd been eyeing up on Etsy for a while. They are made by super duper illustrator Harriet Gray who has an Etsy shop full of wonderful things like these and this. You can get one for £2.50 or you can choose 3 for £5.50, which is a pretty sweet deal. I also bought a pencil case with cats on it which is also great.

Carrying on with the tattoo theme, we bought our friend some tattoos from Laura Gee's Etsy shop. She has a whole range of lovely prints and cushions that are definitely worth a look too.

So what did you get for Christmas? Between us we received a truck full of sweets and generally unhealthy things, I got loads of socks (Which is good, because I can never be bothered to go and buy my own socks) and Liz got me a copy of Dead Snow on DVD, the plot of which, on IMDB, is described as: "A ski vacation turns horrific for a group of medical students, as they find themselves confronted by an unimaginable menace: Nazi zombies". I am very excited about watching it. FYI, the zombies in this movie are fast zombies, not your standard shuffling ones. Apparently the speed that zombies can move at is a contentious issue. Terrifying.

Happy New Year!

S

Today by Stef Bradley

Last weekend we took our stuff to sell at the Leeds Zine Fair. It was alright! We sold quite a bit of stuff and spoke to some nice people and generally had a pretty good time. While we were having a look round the other stalls, we came across the amazing Today zine, which is written by Stef Bradley, and we liked it so much that we thought we'd devote an entire post to it. Here is that post.

Today is a comic of sorts, full of dead funny drawings that document what its creator thinks about on a day-to-day basis. From silverfish infestations and poems about winter being absolutely bobbins to the awkward situations that ensue when you take over a recently deceased person's job. It's all there. If I was writing for a high brow publication, I might describe it as a 'celebration of the minutiae of everyday life'. That's right! The minutiae!

Here's a bit of Today volume one for you to have a look at. Stef was selling the first two volumes of the zine in a pencil case type thing for FIVE POUNDS (Keep reading for sample photo of that). Bargain! We bought one and read and re-read both volumes on the way home. Liz can't even read on public transport without feeling sick but she flipping well had a go, such was her desperation to have another look.

By the time we had arrived back home, our zine super fandom had reached fever pitch. The first thing we did  was try and look for the zine on the internet. 'Surely there must be some kind of web presence for such a talent?' said neither of us. Sadly this turned out not to be the case, so we were unable to do any kind of research (Hence the poor quality of this post). So then we just had to send an overenthusiastic email to Stef, just to let her know how great her zines are. Not only did she reply, she actually sent us a free copy of the third instalment of Today! Amazing. Here's a photo with all three volumes of the zine (In order!) and the pencil case thing that comes with the first two.

As mentioned above, there's no website/blog/anything for Today at the moment. You can, however, buy stuff from Stef by emailing her if you like! Just send orders and compliments to stef bradley at live dot co dot uk and I'm sure you'll be able to come to some kind of agreement. Alternatively, you'll be able to buy the zine at the Inprint Liverpool Print Fair, which is going to be at the Shipping Forecast pub on December 9th. And in even more exciting news, she's going to be sharing a stall with us! You'll only need to visit one stall to buy all your zine related Christmas presents.

In other news, you can buy the new issue of Young Explorer on our Etsy now. It's got Phil Elverum, Haiku Salut, buses, illustrations, a competition (!) and a thing I wrote about my grandad's record collection that, if you squint, could almost be described as 'poignant'. Get on it, or something like that.

See yer!

S