Category: How to

Green­cheeks

Ruth had a dream that you could buy tins of some­thing called “Green­cheeks” that seemed to be tinned Kermit meat. I had to make this a real­ity in Photoshop using a stock can mockup template.

Some ideas and resources for arguing against common racist comments in the UK

At the time of writ­ing in June 2020, we’re going through a dramat­ic shift in public conscious­ness in many coun­tries about racism, the prob­lems with current soci­ety, and nasty histor­ies that have been brushed over and ignored. A lot of my friends are arguing with family members and acquaint­ances, or discov­er­ing that friends are much less well-informed than they’d hoped. Here’s a resource page of response ideas and links to resources.

How to spot fake Twit­ter accounts and misin­form­a­tion

The main way to keep up to date with what’s happen­ing on the ground with the Black Lives Matter Protests is via social media (and Twit­ter in partic­u­lar).

It’s really confus­ing though, because there are a lot of people and organ­isa­tions acting in bad faith and delib­er­ately making commu­nic­a­tion and fact-check­ing diffi­cult, and using manip­u­la­tion strategies to drown out the real inform­a­tion about what’s happen­ing on the ground.

Photoshop Digit­al Colour tutori­al

Multiple people have asked me for a tutori­al of how I do colour in Photoshop. A lot of people think my prints are analogue screen-prints, but they’re actu­ally mostly digit­al. I draw the ink lines by hand, but all the colour and texture is created in Photoshop.

Trif­fids in search of a new home

I’ve got a large number of cacti and succu­lents, some of which I’ve had for years (and have their own offshoot chil­dren grow­ing in separ­ate pots now). By the end of the summer, some of them were look­ing a bit sad, and were in seri­ous need of repot­ting. I collec­ted a load of Hornsea ware and other vintage pottery for £1-3 a time over the summer, and then had a big repot­ting session outside, just before the weath­er star­ted turn­ing cold.

Low stress travel on the cheap

I love to travel, but I don’t have much money. Although long-haul flights and luxury holi­days are out of my reach at the moment I’ve managed to see a fair bit of the world for not very much, and perhaps my budget limit­a­tions have meant that I’ve seen some inter­est­ing places I might have other­wise missed out on.

I find online budget travel tips not that great though. They seem to swing from “save money by only eating ityer­eal bars and sleep­ing on trains on your trip” to “cram in thirty museums in one day with this special tick­et” to “get this special Air Miles cred­it card only avail­able in Flor­ida, and book your flights at 3am on Thursdays Alaska time”. I want to eat nice food from the cuisine of the coun­try in ques­tion; sleep in a clean, safe and comfort­able hotel room in a conveni­ent loca­tion; and get a chance to explore and see things prop­erly, not treat­ing sights like a tick list to complete as quickly as possible. I don’t want to be cold, hungry, exhausted, or put myself in danger; this is supposed to be fun. I just don’t have a lot of money to spend.

How I Make my Zines

This is how I person­ally make my zines. There’s no right or wrong way (aside from doing things like acci­dent­ally making it unread­able once photo­copied or forget­ting about your margins and cutting off half the text). If you want a more in-depth guide to all things zine-related, I can recom­mend Stolen Sharpie Revolu­tion. You can see all the back issues of my zines on my website.

How to run a zine event

For 3 years I was part of the group that ran the Brighton Zine­fest. We star­ted just with the idea it would be fun to have a zine event in Brighton and managed to build a success­ful and fun event. Sadly we don’t run it any more because some of the origin­al organ­isers live in Brighton any more, the others were too busy, and nobody new appeared to take over, and so it just wasn’t prac­tic­al to hold anoth­er.