Some zines seem to need a whole lot of pages in which to tell their tales. They have page afer page of cut and pasted art and rambling missives that come straight from their adolescent journals, and by the end, you realize that what was said in 60 pages could have been summed up succinctly and beautifully in six.

Not so with t h o u g h t s, a so-called irregular offering from the very talented Aisling of aisling.net. This volume, separated into two small booklets, are tiny, each one only 1/4 sized and maybe six sheets long, packs a whole lot of punch into a small space.

Covering topics as diverse as letterboxing and collage techniques, one booklet is random ... well, random thoughts. The other comprises her thoughts and technique for creating gel-medium collages, and features full color illustrations -- something almost unheard of in zines.

There's no information listed in these as to whether or not you can get these by any other means than just an e-mail and some stamps to the author, but I can't stress enough that any hassle one must go through to get ahold of them is well worth the time lost. They're zinemaking at its simple best. E-mail Aisling at ais@aisling.net.

[ by Elizabeth Badurina ]
Rambles: 14 December 2002