Hello Reader!

I’m happy to see you here 😊

This week I was planning to calm down a bit after the events of the previous week (i.e., how I had to survive my biggest convention yet!). However, as you can see by the title, I didn’t do nothing this week either! I’m super excited to share with you what I’ve been preparing this weekend, and why I made so many :)

Let’s jump into it!

Why and how did I make 66 stickers in a weekend

Let me briefly tell you how I got there:

This weekend (July 2025) I’m exhibiting with some friends at a gigantic convention in Krakow, where thousands of people are expected to attend. We are slowly improving our stand and offering with each of our shows, and this time I wanted to do something different: Make stickers!

All week when I had some free time I would doodle and think of ideas for a possible series: I knew that what is popular are either relatable memes, or fanart.

While I would love to do those, I was struggling to find ideas that would both be interesting, and that I felt in my heart was aligned with me. I’m trying as much as I can to follow my gut, and I wasn’t feeling right with what I was coming up with.

But that’s until I remembered an old passion of mine: 90’s Japanese magazines.

You can count, there is indeed 66 different design in here!

In addition to being fascinating on their own, I drew a lot from those magazines; ranging from fashion study to doodling ramen packaging.

Inspired by the maximalist clutter of those pages, I decided to create a massive sticker sheet - a collection of many different stickers in one page - all themed around pictures, ads, and the aesthetic of this era.

One doodle after the other, and I had a complete page filled!

These are much easier than full-on illustrations, and constantly switching subjects helps a lot in keeping things fresh for me.

Some are elements I took straight up from the pages, but others have more hidden meaning behind them; I could go on forever about the different hidden references!

For example, did you know that in Japan KitKats are unreasonably popular, especially during exam season? That’s because KitKat, by pure coincidence, sounds a lot like きっと勝つ (Kitto Katsu), which means “You will surely win”! It’s a gigantic thing, and has its own page on Wikipedia.

And that’s a very easy reference, more obscure things are in there too!

All in all, I hope you can tell I had fun with this sticker sheet 😊 Next step will be to prepare it for printing; I need to define the cutting outline, format it, and send it to print!

Hopefully by Friday I will have everything ready! :)

POV: It’s 1997 and you’re a fashionable Japanese teenager

Now, I couldn’t help myself but take you with me on a little dive into some of my favorite pages from those 90’s fashion magazines for teenage girls.

There are a lot of hidden gems in there, so sit back and enjoy!

One thing that fascinates me about old media is that it’s impossible to replicate the energy of any era; things created then can never be recreated again. And by the same extent, there will never be a time with media exactly matching what comes out nowadays!

"very short song for everyone who can recognize the difference between doing this and doing that"

Stories and aesthetics are so tied to our environment, the collective mind, and the technology, that they constantly evolve with it. But by diving into the culture of the past (even very recent ones!) you can find a treasure trove of ideas that now seem completely foreign, and novel at the same time

I have no clue what I'm looking at but what a vibe

And above all, it’s just so much fun to flip through those pages :)

If you’d be interested, a lot of them are freely accessible on Archive.org!

My biggest influence for the sticker sheet was this edition of CUTiE, huge recommend!

If you are into weird street fashion, FRUiTS is also a big reference; I drew so many of those clothes in the past!

Convention preparations are ramping up!

As I said, this weekend we are all preparing for an even bigger show, named “Ryucon”!

And one thing particularly scary about it is that it lasts 3 days - Friday to Sunday. Thankfully my friends are coming with me, so that should be doable!

Stickers and prints are on their way to be printed, and we also made a lot of investments to improve our table; but we needed to be a bit creative to fit in our budget.

If you’ve ever been to an anime expo or artist alley, you may have noticed those gigantic walls full of prints that artists like to set up to show off their art.

Those are great, and made up of modular panels so that they can fit any space; but if you want to buy them from Amazon, they can be very expensive. They know how much demand there is for them!

Or you can buy them from AliExpress, but we wanted to be sure to have them on time for the expo.

The solution? Buy a rabbit cage.

You see, whether you buy a modular shelf, specialized equipment for artist alley, or supplies for your pet, it all boils down to just grid panels and plastic attachments; it’s the same product, but with different names!

And the best part is that the rabbit cage was half the price of anything else we found (even on Chinese websites), was delivered in just a few days, and holds up remarkably well!

Hopefully it will work even when the structure will be hanging above our heads haha

I will report next week if this big wall made a difference for us! In any case, I’m super excited to finally be able to show off my bigger prints ✨

And I'll leave it at this for this week! Thank you for following this journey, and brace yourself for next week as I'll take you on this journey to a gigantic convention held in a literal stadium, with thousands of people!

Until then, please enjoy the rest of your day :)

And take care!
- Nighten