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my homemade monstar costume
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the cover of my zine
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Today I made a mini hand-drawn zine!
I've been thinking about making a zine for a while, but it always seemed like
a big project. In my head I'd have to get all my friends together, receive
submissions, edit and assemble and distribute. But today my friend posted a
really cool zine they made and it inspired me to just start making one.
My goal recently has been to get back into creating freely, without
overthinking, just letting things flow out of me and removing resistance. I
like the quote that Tyler the Creator shared, "Create like a child, edit like
a scientist." I want to create like a child at the very least, to connect with
the ways I created when I was younger. I want to heal my inner creative child
and nurture the interests I've had my whole life. And try to get past the
resistance I feel to creating in general, since it's so easy to just be on the
internet and stay idle instead. I desperately want to make things, somehow. I
have to both force it AND let it flow.
So I looked up how to fold a single sheet of paper into a zine. Then I
gathered a few materials which were easy to grab, and then I just started
drawing. The first topic that came to mind, in the spirit of connecting with
my inner creative child, was monsters. I was a monster kid, I had monster
themed sheets, and my mom made me an awesome handmade monster costume for
halloween (pictured above, probably 2008 or 9?). I used to draw them all the
time, but I called my creations "monstars", named after my most commonly drawn
character, who was some type of green dinosaur type guy. I don't remember very
many of my monstars, but I'm sure they're in a box somewhere in my mom's
house.
In honor of my monster kid self, I made the cover of the zine based on a photo
of me in my monster costume, giving her the spot of honor as
monstar-creator-extraordinaire. I recreated 4 of my classic monstars from
memory for the first few pages, and created 4 new never-before-seen monstars
to round out the group. I drew everything very quickly, inked it and used one
color per page. I think that this approach helped me not overthink things, and
also helped me not get bored and put things down which would make me less
likely to finish. I gave them each a name or title (these were not the same
ones I gave to the characters when I was a kid because I couldn't remember
them. except for Monstar of course.) I signed the zine Mausolena, which is my
present day horror host/monster kid name.
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pages 2 and 3: "Killer Eyeball" and "Fuzzy Cuddly Pal"
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pages 4 and 5: "Monstar" and "Spiral Lady"
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pages 6 and 7: "Experiment 26" and "Spirit Ghoul"
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| page 8: "Husband and a Half" (back cover)
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I really enjoyed making this tiny zine! It was a good exercise in just
creating something, letting the ideas flow and not putting too much pressure
on myself. It was fun and easy and taught me a new skill, and I am excited for
the potential that the format has for other ideas in the future. I think that
maybe I'll do my next zine about things I've written in my commonplace book
recently, or my recent favorite things, or just a topic I've been stewing on.
And I'm looking forward to continuing to choose creativity in the future, and
taking more opportunities to connect with my inner child and creative process. Maybe starting with more crafts/art projects that I would've done in elementary school or middle school art classes!
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the full zine flattened out
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Hopefully we'll talk again soon!
Love and monstars,
- Celina (Mausolena)
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