Last summer, I joined rukristin’s Awesome Ladies Project online community to help on my scrapbooking journey, and one of my favorite projects that I’ve done so far as part of the site is her “Best of…” course. It’s quick and simple to fill out the sheets she provides (although choosing favorites isn’t exactly easy), and when I had my list narrowed down, I went through the paper books I already had from zine making, picked a few pieces I thought coordinated, and started putting together my first mini book.
I decided to go more with favorites than “best”–which there was a great conversation about on the ALP site, actually–because most of the time I’m reading purely for entertainment or to learn something. I don’t always read critically and can sometimes be pretty easily pleased with something even if it’s not objectively “good.” I’m trying to be better about that this year, in fact, by writing more reviews on Goodreads after I finish a book rather than just rating it, which maybe I’ll talk about in a later post.
Anyway, my list turned out as so:
10. Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
9. Sadie by Courtney Summers
8. Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon
7. Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy by Angela Garbes
6. Inspection by Josh Malerman
5. Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
4. The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Legacy of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O’Meara
3. Two Can Keep a Secret by Karen M. McManus
2. Doctor Sleep by Stephen King
1. The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum
For my first try at anything resembling a mini book, I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. I like the size, I like the way I included the covers, and I really like the fact that I managed to use a lot of scraps to do it; I didn’t buy anything new for this. Even the yarn on the binding is leftover from an old sock knitting project.
I’m already planning a second mini album, this time with my favorite horror movies of the 2010s. I think that one will be a bit more challenging, mainly because I don’t keep track of the movies I watch quite like I do the books I read, but I think it’ll be fun nonetheless. Plus, it gives me an excuse to use the Halloween paper pack I got last year.
For months I’ve been obsessed with scrapbooking. It’s on my radar as a possible creative activity for years, since around the time 30 Days of Lists started, but it’s only recently that I’ve finally begun dipping my wallet toes into it, and as I was working on a mini book of my favorite reads from 2019, I realized part of what I love so much about it–scrapbooking is surprisingly similar to zines. Even digital design is similar in the way you layer, create text blocks, and just pour yourself into it to tell your story. The biggest difference, of course, is that you don’t really publish scrapbooks. At most, we share photos of our works on Instagram or blogs, but there’s no photocopying and distributing like with zines. The act is similar, though, in laying out the pages and telling stories.