VidaVeganCon ~ The Official Zine of VVC 2015 Giveaway (& digital copy for you!)

One of the two sessions I presented at VidaVeganCon this year was called "Let's Make a Zine!" The idea was that each person in the group would prepare one page of a collective VVC recipe zine, and then would receive actual copies of the printed zine before the conclusion of the conference.

It came to my attention that a lot of people don't know what a "zine" is! It's pronounced "zeen," like the second half of the word "magazine." There's an interesting page about zines on Wikipedia, if you're interested. Zines had a big role in some of the punk and riot grrl and vegan movements -- as a way of self-publishing perspectives that weren't being heard in mainstream media or published by mainstream publishers. So, making a VVC zine is very much in keeping with the movement!

For my workshop, I asked people to bring a recipe from home that was either a family recipe or an original recipe of their own (so that we wouldn't have any copyright infringement issues with using other people's recipes.) I brought along all the crafty supplies -- blank paper, lined paper, pencils, erasers, pens, gluesticks, white out, and lots of fun clip art for people who didn't want to draw.

I also made everyone a surprise giftie: a small zine called "How to Make a Zine" (so meta!!) We spent a little time going through the basics of getting started with a zine project in general, and then we got straight to work with crafty fun.

hard at work!

This was such a lovely experience! I had prepared a play list of songs -- mostly old-timey country songs about Texas, with a few songs about cooking or veggies thrown in for fun. We had the music playing, some chit chat, and lots of focused crafty concentration together. Getting together with friends and working on crafty projects is something I've been doing All My Life, but not nearly as much lately as I used to. Being at this table with all these great people, laughing and forming friendships, and being silent together was just wonderful. It made me feel like a kid again! As Joanna said, "This is so calming!" It really was great.

Turn around and Smile!

pics by my mom! 

This workshop took two whole sessions, because crafting takes time! At the end of our time together, everyone turned in their own personal hand-crafted recipe original.

At that point, my mom and I flew into action! 

I don't think I've mentioned yet that I got to bring my mom along to VidaVeganCon this year, for the second time. It was so wonderful to share the whole VVC experience with her! It was especially great to have her with me for this workshop -- because my mom is my life-long crafty inspiration. She's also my zine inspiration, because she was involved with a self-published zine way back in the late 1970's. It was called "The Zucchini Cookbook," and was a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood of Santa Cruz County, where my mom worked for 40+ years. 

It was also great to have my mom along because she is a seriously trust-worthy crafty teammate and we trust each other wholly on crafty matters. She and I skipped the next session and spent that time very efficiently assembling all the pages into the proper order, crafting up the index, figuring out the page numbers, and getting the whole original ready to go off to the printers!!! 

By the very next day -- as promised! -- every person in the zine workshop received four copies of the printed zine: to share or trade or give away. (*special thanks to Michele and Daniel & Marie for doing the runs to the printer and back, so that my mom and I could enjoy a few more of the other sessions!!*)

the finished product!

It was really great to have such a quick turnaround and to be able to deliver the completed zines to everyone by lunch the next day. Hopefully now all those zinesters will feel confident and inspired to go forth and create more vegan zines in this world! 

Zine Giveaway!

Here's the fun part: I have three copies of the zine we created in our workshop, called "A totally Awesome, Fun & Inspirational Zine!" to giveaway! If you'd like to win a copy, just leave a comment on this blog post. Be sure to use a login or email address so that I can contact you if you win. This is open to everyone in the whole entire world! 

On the other hand, if you're just as happy with a digital copy... I made a digital pdf of the zine that you can download here:

A totally Awesome, Fun, & Inspirational Zine!