taking a break

I pinched this image off Swonderful's blog because it's so beautifully shot and the zines look so nice and pristine!

So, we've decided to take a bit of a summer break due to financial issues amongst other things, we will aim to have Issue Three out by the end of February but we'll have to see what happens. Don't worry though Cardboard Box will be back.. hopefully catch us as Cross Street Carnival on February the 14th, if we don't accepted we'll still be there with bells on - it's going to be an awesome day!

Issue Three

So Issue Three is well under way and we've got some exciting people featuring! Some of our lovely artists whose work we will have the pleasure of showing off include Sophie Corban, recent graduate of a BVA at AUT (what Nicola and I both did) and also a very good friend. She's been snapped up by dealer gallery Seed in Newmarket already and it's not hard to see why with her edgy work: 

Sally Shand originally contacted us about the art swap advertised in Issue One but her work was so amazing (self described as like 'frankie') we just had to get her to feature! 

Jo Galvin is an artist/photographer/curator involved in some cool projects around Auckland, her photography blows me away, it's so beautifully shot..

Oh and Kraftbomb is coming up this Sunday - Grey Lynn Community Centre from 11-2pm so come along and buy a copy of Issue Two or one of the 6 Issue One's we have left - we'd love to see you there! It's the Christmas edition so it's sure to be good.

the stall..

Craftwerk was such an awesome night, sold plenty of zines.. Also Oui Boutique in St Kevin's now stocks CBB which is very exciting for us, Marita Hewitt who featured in Issue One has her amazing work up at Oui right now - check it out!

Craftwerk

We just got into Craftwerk! Yuss!! Come and check out our stall this Thursday night in St Kevins Arcade..

a wee mention

A big thank you to Julia from Studio Home Creative who stumbled across CBB in Queenstown and put up a lovely post about it on her blog - check it out! 

HOARD

I thought it was high time I reviewed another zine purchased at Zinefest - well two actually - Issues One and Two of HOARD. Nicola brought Issues Three and Four but these ones jumped out at me because they both document collections of items that I have been known to hoard myself. Infact I am a chronic hoarder of all things useful and more often otherwise and these zines send such a massive wave of nostalgia over me it's amazing. 

In the intro to Issue One - Stamps, writer Hurricane wants me to join him in 'this several part series where I waste my time and space on collections so you don't have to' but actually he succeeds in the opposite - I want to drag my stamp collection (in an official album of course) out of the cupboard and get back into it!!

The stamps are all well organised, according to countries and what's pictured on the stamps - planes, outerspace and animals etc..

I actually have the entire butterfly collection pictured here..

Yeah.. so when I was overseas when I was younger I collected sugar, as well as sand (which produced a solitary bad-ass moment when I got caught taking a few crumbs off the Pyramids!) and coins, so this one brings back memories too..

I love the backgrounds of maths and refill paper!

I think my sugar collection is gone forever but at least with this zine I get to relive the feeling of satisfaction I had upon returning to NZ laden with sugar sachets!

Kraftbomb!

In my mad rush out of the door in an intensely hungover state on Sunday morning I stupidly forgot my camera but rest assured.. our stall looked great!

It was our most successful outing to Kraftbomb yet and we sold a record number of zines, with at least three people I can remember specifically purchasing Issues One AND Two - one of whom was fellow Kraftbomb-er Miss Deb who makes awesome sock monkeys - we're hoping you aren't regretting succumbing to our persuasive pitch!! Such a positive experience.

We have just been confirmed for the Christmas edition of Kraftbomb (21st of Dec) which sounds like it's going to be epic so come along and find all your friends and family members awesome Christmas presents - a few issues of CBB perhaps?!

#2

Yuss!!

Our first review!

Sarah Gauntlett from Nzgirl.com popped by our stall at the last Kraftbomb to pick up a copy of Issue One to review..

The review is now up as part of The Art's Insider: November and we have the pleasure of featuring alongside other fellow Kraftbombers. I love how inclusive calling us nzgirls is! Follow this to check it out..

Thanks Sarah!

Neighbour Cats!

Neighbour Cats one of the awesome zines Nicola and I brought at Zinefest.. It is basically exactly what the title would suggest, with every cat in the neighbourhood of the writer getting a portrait of themselves, an in depth character description, notes on colouring (both making spotting them easier if you were to say, go looking for them as I am severely tempted to do on my next Wellington trip!) and a friendliness rating.

Each cover features a different cat and I love the little guy on the front of mine! The zine is printed onto that great refill paper that little kids use to learn to write on - the triple thickness lines with a dotted line through the middle.

This is a map giving exact cat locations, each cat corresponding with a letter.

Jobbles (A.) is undoubtedly my fave, he comes first in the zine and is followed by his neighbours including Gate-Face, who in desperate attempts for affection tries to squeese himself through his gate, Dogloo Cat, who lives in an igloo shaped doghouse and apparently isn't too friendly and Lexi who unfortunately has no hair.

Awesome! 

November Kraftbomb

This Kraftbomb will be especially exciting for us because it will be the launch of the much anticipated (by us anyway!) Issue Two! We've put together all the pages, designed a great cover to rival the success of the brown paper of Issue One and are all ready to go except it needs to be laid up by our super computer lady Jess and then printed.. minor details..

Our All Expenses Paid Business Trip

CBB loves Wellington! And to be completely honest that works the other way too - our trip was such a positive experience, our zine has been so well received down there, it was quite overwhelming.. 

We spent the weekend visiting stockists and even adding another one to our list - Good as Gold on Victoria St - such a great store! We had a great brainstorm/diagram drawing session while scoffing cinnamon gelato on the waterfront where we finally sorted the problematic second cover, talked about the zine every opportunity we got and placed a whole heap of business cards around the city.

Here's Iko Iko's final copy hanging out on the shelf, only found after a depressing 10mins of browsing where we thought they didn't stock it after all! We got chatting to the gals behind the counter about CBB and a zine made by a group of (I think) 5 girls down there called Flouro, we even got a 10% discount on the kick-ass necklaces we both brought!

I was so excited to check out Swonderful as I had heard good things and religiously check their blog out, also they stock a rather ludicrous number of zines for us which is awesome! If the displaying of the signs we sent down to accompany the zines was a competition Swonderful would most definately win..

Zinefest was awesome! Nicola and I combined brought epic quantities of zines, they'll make for some great reading for weeks to come. I think we can be forgiven for not going to any of the talks, severe hangovers had been coming on all day and spending up large on zines really takes it out of you. We'll try and post reviews on the zines we brought, my favourite of which I can already tell you is - 'Neighbour Cats' for 50c.

Here's CBB on Cherry Bomb's stall, Tui definately had the widest spread collection of zines and books, very impressive. 

Madame Fancy Pants is a stockist Mel approached for us so it was great to go in and meet the lovely ladies who run the shop who informed us that Wellington City Library had brought a copy off them for their permanent collection - exciting!

Some great graffiti spotted on Cuba Street!

Mintie's Market

So this weekend Nicola and I head to Wellington! We can't wait to check out all our stockists, hit up Zinefest (I've just designed some cute business cards to be on hand for networking purposes!) and now we've been told by our awesome friend Mel that we may just have a stall at the newly set-up Mintie's Market on the Sunday! Even if we don't end up with a stall we will still be there with bells on.. oh to live in Wellington..

ISSUE #2

Issue Two is totally under way already and we've got some of our favourite artists lined up to interview and feature work from.. Here's a taste of what to expect..

This great illustration is by the very talented Henrietta Harris, Nicola and I went to a solo show of her work at Satellite Gallery a few months ago and were in awe.. she has her fingers in alot of pies doing everything from painting to poster designs. 

Joy Kampia O'Shell is now officially my favourite crochet artist ever, she has produced the most amazing, intricate meals, one-off dresses and an assortment of other domestic items all hand crocheted! 

Natasha Cantwell has been one of my favourite photographers ever since I stumbled across her work at EA Gallery a few years ago. I am so excited to be featuring her work!

This time around 'The Catalogue' (that seriously needs a better name!) will be put together in association with toggle, I've asked Esther Lamb who runs the site with Shelley to name her three favourite artists whose work features on their site. Trixie Delicious will be featured - here are some of her vintage bone china plates with hand-painted text that have gained alot of great publicity!

CBB's second Kraftbomb

Once again another very sweet location! Same basic set up as last time except instead of a fitted bed sheet we went for a duvet cover.. The zines went down well once again, it's pretty exciting having people pay to read something you've put together!

The fan out of zines experienced a bit of an upgrade!

The one thing that was lacking last time was a sign so we had to make this one, an enlargement of ones we've been sending out to stockists.

Kraftbomb was totally awesome in the new (and bigger) space this time, so many more stall holders all selling great stuff!

Cherry Bomb and Zinefest

CBB is now officially stocked with Cherry Bomb Comics!! They don't have a physical address anymore but still sell through their online shop so check it out if you'd like to purchase CBB or any of the other great zines the ladies stock.

Tui from Cherry Bomb is kindly taking our zine to Zine Fest down in Wellington, (I'll post the poster as soon as I get sent it!) so this leaves Nicola and I free to go on an all expenses paid (by us!) business/research trip to Wellington to spend up large on zines.

It's going to be an awesome day (November 15th) with the event being held at Wesley Church Hall, 75 Taranaki Street from 11-3pm. There will be heaps of zines for sale, even Wellington City Library will be there with their collection, talks, workshops, food and t-shirts and badges for sale! Come and check it out if you're in Wellington, if you're not - get there somehow! 

October Kraftbomb

October Kraftbomb is set to be bigger and better than ever and CBB will be there with bells on!

It's to be held at the new time of 11am-2pm and in a bigger room too..

Our friend from art school Vicki will be a new addition to the list of stall holders - check out her home-made marmalade! mmm

Also, Jess (CBB's computer lady and blog reviewer) and Olivia (who awesomely brought two copies last time..) will be there selling their cute little things once again..

CAN'T WAIT!!

more stockists

Here are our zines all packaged up and ready to be taken into Iko Iko and Conch where they are now officially stored! We've also made up some signs with a little blurb about us on them to accompany zines to stores and they're tres cute.

Down in Wellington you will soon be able to find CBB stocked at Eyeball Kicks, Manky Chops Gallery, Offbeat Originals cafe and Madame Fancy Pants, all on or around Cuba Street and all thanks to Mel. And of course Swonderful and Iko Iko.

Nicola is also sending some away this weekend to an awesome zine store in Melbourne called Sticky Institute just so we can say we're international! 

a busy few days..

Nicola and I have had a pretty hectic few days sorting out stockists now that CBB is finally published - turns out we're not the only people that think our zine is kinda cool!
Some of the awesome places that have agreed to stock CBB include St Paul St Gallery (thanks Leonhard!) Iko Iko (up here AND down in Wellington) Conch Records on Ponsonby Road, and Swonderful boutique in Wellington too.. It's all been pretty exciting - everything is happening so fast!

Our friend Mel who has the good fortune to live down in Wellington has been approaching stores there for CBB too.. as much as I wish I lived in the coolest city in NZ I don't so thanks Mel for doing that for us! Watch this space.. two stores have been confirmed but we haven't heard names yet..

We have officially finished the first run of zines - the re-print is scheduled for Monday! Yuss.

p.s. the drawing is one of Nicola's very own, to be featured on our signs that will accompany zines to stores!

Our First Outing

What we can probably call the Cardboard Box Launch happened at Kraftbomb this afternoon... we are very stoked with the response to our hard work, some sort of sign would have gone down well but apart from that we are SO happy with how well our little zine went.

Here's Nicola at our stall - maximum air flow was great! Thanks Karla and City for our prime location!

And of course thanks to everyone who purchased a copy - ENJOY.

We had A3 sheets of 10 of our spreads on the table, on top of a very last minute fitted bed sheet that I had to sprint home and get when we realised the paper wouldn't cover the entire surface! 

As well as the two piles of the zine we also sold a few brooches each. Check out our stall at Kraftbomb next month - Nicola's promised an addition of Birthday Cards!

Kraftbomb!

This is a bit late considering Kraftbomb is tommorrow but here's the sweet little flyer for it! We've got a table in the middle.. So excited!

Issue One

This incredibly well taped up box contains the first run of 100 zines!! 

Thanks SO MUCH to Blair who totally suprised us by not just printing the entire run but collating, trimming, saddle stitching and trimming down the brown paper cover, staying on at work into the early hours of the morning that also happened to be his birthday!

Some of the interviews you can look forward to reading are with Lisa Black, Marita Hewitt, Linden Simmons, Elliot Collins, Jennifer Mayer, Karla and City from Kraftbomb and Brian Jonestown Massacre. Thanks to all these people as well as those of you who sent us images, articles and reviews, Issue One would not be looking as amazing as it does without you!

The zine so far..

With Issue One pretty much published already (it's getting printed in 2 days!) it's probably about time something was actually put on our blog..
We have been busily working away on our layouts, hassling late contributors and learning a thing or two about computers along the way - thank god for Jess!
Nicola and I always intended for our little zine to be very cut and paste for the very reason that neither of us (especially me) are any good at computers, so here are a few of our layouts ready to be scanned - literally cut with scissors and pasted with glue sticks.



We put an ad on The Big Idea for contributions and Lisa Black was one amazing artist who got back to us, she creates what she calls 'Fixed Animals' - real taxidermy animals that she then inserts mechanical parts into. We were a bit shocked at first having never seen anything like it but her work is very powerful.



My buddy Jen is studying in her final year of photography at AUT where Nicola and I also studied, she is making some pretty great work so of course I had to interview her. In the foreground there is a wee ad that'll be featured about an Art Swap - anyone interested - contact us!




I interviewed the lovely ladies behind Kraftbomb about what goes into organising one of the best craft fairs to hit Auckland recently.. Issue One will be on sale there this Sunday - Grey Lynn Community Centre, 1-4pm.


Ah.. the sweet hook ups of working at a printing factory - the first run of our zine is only going to set us back 2 dozen beers - excellent!