Top Coat Zine

Subscribe 

To subscribe to the monthly zine, contribute $5 or more on the Party Nails PatreonThe $5 pricetag includes shipping to anywhere.

Purchase a la carte in the Shop.

 

Submit

We accept submissions on a rolling basis. If your work does not "fit" our current theme, it will be in a subsequent issue. When submitting, bear in mind that Top Coat Zine is entirely black and white.

You can submit one of three ways:

1. Join the Discord and submit to the zine-submissions channel.
2. Email your submission to elana@partypartynails.com.
3. Drop your file(s) into this Dropbox folder.

Your submission(s) can be as dark, light, weird, mainstream, off-putting or light as you'd like.

Top Coat Zine themes 2023-2024:
December 2023 - Traditions, Celebrations, Rituals (submissions close Dec. 7)
January 2024 - Hibernation and Resting (submissions close Jan. 7)
February 2024 - Metamorphosis (submissions close Feb. 7)
March 2024 - Beginnings (submissions close March 7)
April 2024 - Escapism (submissions close April 7)
May 2024 - Ennui (submissions close May 7)
June 2024 - Cards (submissions close June 7)
July 2024 - Nature (submissions close July 7)
August 2024 - Packaged Goods (submissions close Aug. 7)
Sept/Oct/Nov 2024 - Triple Issue: Vulgarity, Taboo, Otherness (submissions close Sept. 7)
December 2024 - Before & After (submissions close Dec. 7)

    Questions? Email elana@partypartynails.com.

     

    Archive

    Issue #2: WEIRD is out! Printing and mailing ran late due to Party Nails being on tour.

    Issue #1: REAL is out! This first issue is free to anyone who submitted work and provided their mailing address, or whose mailing address was already in the Party Nails contact system. About 200 were sent out, and another 100 were passed out on tour.

     

    About

    Top Coat Zine is a monthly, printed physical place for art, words, illustrations, photography, questions, missed connections, poetry, events, QR codes to digital art and songs. In an age of algorithmic curation, it is especially important to hold something like a zine in our hands, to absorb the creations of others, without statistics or credits next to them. Just experiencing humanness in art changes us and connects us. Art matters. Community matters.

    Top Coat Zine is edited by Elana Carroll aka Party Nails, an LA-via-Chatham, New York musician-producer-performer-artist-engineer-person. After a notable shift in social media connectivity in 2020—from a way to interact and connect with an audience to being fed attention-grabbing posts from accounts we don't even follow—Carroll started thinking about new ways to connect. Zines are nostalgic, sure, but Party Nails isn't the first musician to start one in the 2020s, and she won't be the last!