Pin & Ink
I’ve been a magazine lover for years and once had a sizable collection of diverse titles and genres that could be considered borderline hoarding. I could never decide between just one or two that I really wanted and eventually made my selections for purchase like a spoiled and entitled guest in Willy Wonka’s factory, hustling an armful to the counter and silently singing to myself that I wanted them all and I wanted them now.
Even though I’ve been able to somewhat curb my buying habit, a part of me still laments Marie Kondo-ing my periodical stash before Marie Kondo-ing was a thing.
I especially wince when I think about the numerous black magazines from the 90s and early 2000s that I purged, some that are no longer in print: VIBE, Black Hair, HONEY, Emerge, Essence, Savoy, Heart & Soul, Sister 2 Sister, Upscale, and others. The bounty of black entertainment, pop culture, and political history in both print and pictures, all gone.
What I do still possess is a 1985 40th Anniversary edition of EBONY that was gifted to me by my thrift savvy aunt. It’s 362 pages and the fold out cover features some of the publication’s most iconic covers through the years, making it ripe for crafty ambitions. Though I could never intentionally destroy this gem, I did make a trip to Kinko’s to get resized copies of the cover in order to make these, I’m going to say, with bias perhaps, adorable mini EBONY pins. The wood bases are hand painted and varnished, and the mini covers are cut to just about the right size, glued to the base, and protected with a glossy, resin like finish.
The covers I selected feature some of the greats: Stevie Wonder, Cecily Tyson, Lena Horne, The Jackson Five, Muhammad Ali, the cast of The Jeffersons, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Martin Luther King Jr., Jackie Robinson, and Dorothy Dandridge.
The best part is because I didn’t destroy the original, I can make more, and there were other covers I definitely wanted to craft into diminutive glossy adornments. Can’t wait to add to my collection. And since they don’t take up much space, even Marie would approve.
