My second zine! After Puffin Food I was keen to make my next zine! I decided to make this a personal project, unlike the fun collaboration I'd done before. My main idea, as it says in the back of #NonSpon: "#NonSpon zine was born out of the frustration I feel hearing people say “This isn’t sponsored, I just genuinely love it!” Why can’t we love things without people questioning if we’re being manipulated by corporations? I wanted to push against that by sharing a zine full of my favourite branded items, none of which I was paid to endorse."
I decided to deviate away from writing and make this an art zine full of watercolours. I really enjoy watercoloring and even though I'm not AMAZING GOOD I thought it'd be a fun way to express my personal connection to these very branded/corporate objects. The project took an exciting turn when, while trying to crop the watercolours on photoshop, I clicked a wrong button and made the watercolour mirror and multiply itself in the background. I instantly knew I had to adapt the project because the collaged effect was so beautiful. I was originally going to have each watercolour with a little sentence of writing on each page, but I decided to sacrifice the writing for a bolder art piece. I love it!
The other challenge I undertook was to make a stamp for the cover. The Puffin Food cover was designed by my super-talented friend Pip and I thought it'd be fun to totally change styles and make a stamp for the cover. That way it'd be really cheap to reproduce, and a fun new DIY where I'd learn something new. I absolutely loved the process, I had such a good experience crafting it together, and I cannot explain to you how satisfying it is to slice through rubber. 😌 I thought a video showing other people how to do this would be a good idea, in case anyone is like me and loves doing random crafts, and a fun way to share my new zine!
If you're interested in checking out #NonSpon, click here!
I hope you enjoy it!