As a kid I loved writing. I loved words. I loved stories. I was enthralled with the idea that someone had created this story that I had become so lost in, that I loved so much. I loved text.
I grew up in a house of readers. Both my parents were big readers & I’m sure watching them read encouraged my want to read too. Bedtime stories were mandatory & I had favourite books that I’d drive my parents mad reading over & over again.
One of my earliest memories is of my Mum & her best friend & her son & I going to the city library, the two mothers chatting quietly while J & I made our way through the boxes & shelves of picture books.
My Dad was a journalist, so newspapers, what seemed like dozens of them, the morning, the afternoon, the weekend, were always in piles around the house. There was always a paper to be read. And not just the headlines. My Dad introduced me to the comics which he loved & my brother & I quickly did too.
As I grew older I discovered magazines. Firstly my Mum’s piles of old Cosmos & Women’s Weeklys. Boy did I learn some stuff there! But I learnt that I not only loved the words in magazines, I loved how the words were displayed. The visual. How the text was manipulated & made beautiful. How they matched the accompanying story & picture.
I learnt that I loved styling. The recipes, the houses, the fashion. How it all came together was breathtaking to me. I was hooked!
I can still remember the day my Mum bought me my first Dolly Magazine. I must have been about 11 or twelve. How I loved these magazines. I devoured them. I arrived at the Newsagent on the day the next month’s issue was available. I’d be there snapping up my copy & heading home to read it cover to cover & then multiple times again.
Way back then, Dolly was the only magazine aimed at my demographic in Australia. As soon as I was earning my own money I saved up all those babysitting pennies & started buying imported magazines, like Young Modern & Seventeen. Oh how I loved these magazines. I can still smell those American pages, the paper even seemed different to ours.
Imported magazines meant I was at least a season or two ahead of Australia. The fashion trends, the TV & movie stars. This made these mags even more amazing to me!
I moved on from Dolly to Cosmopolitan then from In Style to Madison. For a time it was wedding mags, then all things baby! These days I’m more likely to be found scouring the pages of Real Living & Better Homes & Gardens or The Collective if I’m feeling like a read.
But the thrill is still there for me.
And I think, for some part why I blog is because it’s my chance to create my own little magazine, just like I did when I was a kid, writing stories, cutting & pasting pics from magazines & creating fonts from my Lettering Book in a scrapbook.
Today’s technology allows me to create my own space online. My own Title, stories & pictures. My own editing & curating. Even my own styling! I’m finally living my dream of being a Magazine Editor!
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy creating it!
