🌵‘Zine and Party Prep 🌸

This week has been slow at work so I’ve been trying to use every spare minute on party planning.

I was worried we wouldn’t have enough guests without tumblr to spread the word. But we have more babes than ever signed up and I’m getting really excited. (The more guests, the more folks contributing to cover rental and party costs, the less I have to stress about the financial aspects.)

I’m working on finishing up the ‘zine. This is the 5th Sapphic Slumber Party, but the 4th time we’ve made a ‘zine. The first event was so dreamy most of us experienced a “come down” afterwards, returning to reality. Just those sad party-drop feels where real life feels kinda dull. So Scout suggested some sort of manual to help soften the landing next time. Thus the ‘zine was born.

In the next RSVP I sent out I asked guests to contribute, only a few (lovely courageous wonderful) ladies did, and I had to cobble the rest together myself. But it was cute. And it inspired folks to pitch in the next time, and even more the next.

The first volume was about Self Care, as per Scout’s suggestion. During that party I overheard Cee talking about her insecurities about not being “queer enough”, something most bi/pan/queer women can relate to. This inspired our next ‘zine theme; Queerness. At the following party there was a 4am heart to heart about ageing while female. Over blunts, hitachi’s and Nina Simone we broke down the “witch” episode of Broad City, how powerful it was to have this positive narrative. We decided the next theme would be “Better With Age”.

There was no spark of inspiration this time, just lots of introspection and musing about infatuation and affection, which led to this ‘zine theme: Crushes.

We have so many cute submissions from the talented babes attending, plus I’ve gotten wise (and sick of having to create so much of the content on my own lol) and now I ask a few theme-related questions in the RSVP, so all of the guests technically contribute. For example, this time I asked guests to list their celebrity crushes, and tell me about their first crush. Today on my downtime I compile those answers anonymously into a cute little article for the ‘zine.

This weekend, once I have all the material printed and supplies gathered, Ms.O will come over and we’ll spread everything out on my dining room table and get to work collaging and gluing and adding glitter. And then she’ll take the final product into her high-powered corporate workplace and sneakily use their fancy colour copiers to print it off for free, which is excellent. O ties them all with ribbon and we hand them out with the Loot Bags at the party.

It’s a labour of love and it’s so cool to see so many more guests contributing now. It really feels like a collaboration with our little community. And it helps to go home with a little piece of that energy in your hands.