Sheffield Zine Fest

Two blog posts in one day! Woof! Yesterday we went to Sheffield Zine Fest where we were sharing a table with the ever brilliant Stef Bradley, who now has hand drawn tote bags as well as her super cool comics! If you don't believe me, here, look for yourself:

Just in case you didn't catch the significance in the last paragraph, I will repeat it for emphasis: these tote bags are HAND DRAWN. I can't even begin to fathom how long it must have taken to do that. Stef had loads of them, too, each featuring a different image from her dead good comics. The pollution bogey one is my favourite.

We had a lovely day and it was great to meet all the tablers (this is a term I had never heard of before until yesterday) and visitors and stuff. We even got to have a chat with local indie pop celebrity tonieee from Plouf! and the Parallelograms. We were particularly lucky to have a table next to the supremely talented Jenna Lee Alldread. It is unreal how much good stuff (Etsy link!) she has. Here's my favourite illustration that I could find on her Tumblr (I like illustrations of houses):

We were selling some new things on the stall, too, including some pretty nifty little ladybird brooches and a newly designed little bear that you can now buy on Etsy too!

The event was extremely well organised and we were made to feel very welcome by Chella and Bettie. I think there was talk of there being another zine fest in June some time, so hopefully we will be able to go back and do it again! Here follows a dump of photos from Liz's phone that were taken at the zine fest. They are: 1- our stall! 2- me and Stef! 3- Jenna and her stall!

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Bye!

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

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