I did a market!! Let's talk about Wellington Zinefest!
One of my goals for this year was to try a new thing, it wasn’t specific, it could be any new thing but I wanted to try a new thing. Turns out that thing was Wellington Zinefest.
I’d always wanted to table at a market of sorts but I was always put off by my brain telling me I wasn’t good enough. Until now!
Wellington Zinefest is chill, welcoming and the perfect beginning to the Sofillyletters market scene. I was nervous and anxious as hell and my wee introvertedness was sorely tired afterwards but I did it and it went really well!
In the week lead up I definitely felt like I was at uni again with the crazy deadlines working tirelessly on creating and taming the damn printer! It also didn’t help that I was moving house the week before, I don’t recommend that. But I got it all done, I finished printing and cutting the afternoon before and was luckily able to relax the evening before as the day was very busy and exhausting and totally worth it. Seeing someone squeal with excitement over artwork you’d created is just the best feeling!
The Zines
I made three brand new zines. Zines for those of you who don’t know are like mini magazines that one or a few people create at home and are usually printed or photocopied on a standard home printer. Some artists go all out and get them printed at a professional printer but the joy of zines is the simple and homemade craft of them.
One zine I probably spent way too long on but I was already creating the watercolour drop caps so I thought this was the perfect way to use them. Plus I was able to incorporate my love for all things greek mythology and space! Galactic A to Zine is full of spacey facts and hand watercoloured, illustrated, and lettered.
My best seller was actually my smallest and least amount of work (still a decent amount of work though). Top books of 2020 vol 1 summed up six of my favourite books I’d read over the past 10 months. It led to a fair few discussions of books over the table which was quite excellent! All six books were digitally drawn and all reviews were handwritten and scanned.
And the zine that caused the most commotion at my stall, the one that caught everyone’s eye… Hamilzine! Yes, a terrible name but I love it. A selection of songs from the popular musical Hamilton hand lettered and illustrated in a wee square zine. It even managed to get a customer singing ‘You’ll Be Back’ in the middle of the hall in the best but worst english accent 🤣
I’m so glad I plucked up the courage to finally sign up and do Wellington Zinefest. My cherry is burst and I’m ready to go tabling at some other markets! Just maybe not every week haha. If you know of any fun markets coming up in the lower North Island let me know!
Also, if you’d like to purchase any of the zines mentioned above I don’t currently have them available in my shop but I do have spares left over so flick me an email or send me a DM on instagram and I can sort you out!
- Sophie
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