Process

Zine: Vignettes From Camelot

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“Vignettes From Camelot” includes glimpses into the lives of Arthurian characters: Merlin, Morgana, Arthur, and an unnamed messenger.

The zine is 16 pages long with 4 original stories and hand-drawn illustrations inspired by nature and magic. It’s printed in black and white.

I couldn’t decide on a blue or white cover, and neither could my Instagram poll. 😂 So both colors are available for $4 in my Etsy shop. Shipping is free in the U.S.

If you’re interested in reading about my process for this zine, keep scrolling. 🙂

White and blue covers for Vignettes From Camelot zine
Table of contents and first page of the zine, with "The messenger" as the first story.

The stories in this zine started as a series of tweets I wrote a few years ago. My original idea was to write 10 tweets in a thread and have that be one story about people in Camelot. I never finished that, but I took the ideas I had for Merlin, Arthur, Morgana, and a messenger and fleshed them out into these vignettes.

I drew the illustrations by hand using black and gray markers and pens. I wasn’t sure which illustrations would go with which stories, so I drew each page individually. Here are a few of the original illustrations.

Two illustrations for the zine. On the left are black shadowy swirls that reach up from the bottom of the page. On the right is a castle drawn in gray with black line work.
Two illustrations for the zine. On the left is several trees and branches drawn in black. On the right is gray swirls and black asterisks to symbolize magic.

When I finished all the illustrations, I scanned them so that I could do the layout digitally.

I used Canva to lay out the text and illustrations. I made many of the illustrations semi-transparent so that the text over them was readable. In some cases, I put white boxes behind the text, so that the words stood out without adjusting transparency on the illustration. Here are two of the pages in Canva.

A screenshot from Canva that shows two pages in layout. On the left is the castle illustration with text over it. On the right is gray swirls with text over them.

After I laid out all the pages, I did a few test prints to see how everything looked on paper. I made a some adjustments, and then printed several copies for my Etsy shop.

Zine: Photographic Memories

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“Photographic Memories” is a collection of illustrations, writing, and memories related to photography.

It’s a quarter-page zine and 20 pages, which makes this the largest and longest zine I’ve made to date! The zine is printed in black and white and mostly hand-made with some digital elements.

“Photographic Memories” is available in my Etsy shop and shipping is free within the U.S.!

Photographic Memories cover

It took me a while to make this zine. I knew I wanted to focus on photography, but beyond that, I didn’t know what to include. I knew I didn’t want it to be a how-to guide or lessons on photography. You can google all that and nothing I make would be as extensive or informative.

Instead, I thought about things that stuck with me—concepts and memories—and that’s what I made pages about. Here are some previews:

I made each page individually and then laid out pages by hand. The original pages look like this:

I used sticky notes to label each page, so I wouldn’t lose track of what goes where. I scanned pages, added some white space as buffer, and then printed copies.

I learned a lot by making this zine in a larger and longer format than I’ve done before. I already have plans for my next zine. It probably won’t be as long but it’ll be the same page size.

Thanks for reading!

Put your creative work out there

/ Process

About a year ago, I stated making zines. It was something fun to share with friends, but then the pandemic hit, and we all stayed home. I couldn’t share my zines in person, so I started posting them to Instagram. I had no expectations for how people would respond. People seemed to like them, so every time I made a new zine, I posted it.

I attended a couple online workshops and (virtually) met people who make zines. That created a small community for me, which has been great during a year of limited social interaction.

I post my zines on Instagram and my blog, so anyone can read them digitally. But if anyone wanted a physical copy, there wasn’t an easy way to get one. Last August, I started an Etsy shop. Again, I had no expectations.

This week, I got a message about this zine:

A librarian who purchased my text message zine asked if she can use it as an example in a student workshop. I said yes because 1) it’s an opportunity to support education and 2) that’s super cool! A year ago, I would have never thought something I made would be in a workshop for students across the country. 

It started with me making zines for friends.

Then I posted zines to Instagram. 

Then I found more people who make zines. 

And then someone who saw my zines reached out to me. 

All of this to say—
If you’re working on something—writing, art, poetry, film—and you aren’t sure how it’s going to go…share it anyway. You don’t know if people will like it until they see it. You can’t guess what connections you’ll make through your work. 

Put your creative work out there, and see where it goes. It might lead you somewhere surprisingly good. 

This was originally posted to HEY World, a blogging platform from the wonderful people who made HEY email and Basecamp.

I’m not going to cross-post between there and here on a regular basis, so if you’re interested in following what I’m writing on HEY World, you can go to my page and subscribe for email updates. There’s also a link to the RSS feed (which I love!!), if you prefer to follow blogs that way.

Astronaut contribution

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I contributed a page to the Pocket Thoughts Annual #3, a collaborative zine that features 25+ zinesters from around the world. Each contributor was welcome to do whatever they wanted with their page. I made this astronaut illustration:

astronaut illustration

I wanted to go for a collage look, but still where I made each part of it. This is what the elements looked like, before I put the page together:

I started with black cardstock and a white gel pen for the stars in the background. If you’ve seen my space-themed illustrations, you know I love drawing stars on black paper. 🙂

I drew the astronaut on white cardstock and the…cloud thing on black cardstock with a black fineliner and white gel pen. Then I cut those out.

The white strips on the left of the page are pieces of white cardstock.

I printed the text using my Phomemo printer. It’s so handy for little things like this!

And then I glued everything into place. To send it in for the zine, I scanned it, so I could send a jpg.

Making this page took a while since I created each element separately, but I’m really happy with how it came out.

Zine: Exploring is learning

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I wanted to do a space and sea theme for a while, but I was stuck on the words. And then NASA found water on the moon.

I love how the colors, text, and illustrations came together. If you want to read about my process for this zine, keep scrolling after the images. 🙂

Color photocopies of this zine are available in my Etsy shop.

I started with a white sheet of cardstock and used blue and black stamping inks to build the background colors.

The blue ink is distress oxide ink, so it reacts with water. After the blue and black inks dried on the page, I sprayed the blue area with water and used a clean brush to move the water around and add some texture. Then I let it dry completely. I drew the seaweed and everything else in the blue area with Tombow dual brush pens.

I drew the stars and moon in the black area with a white gel pen.

To create the text, I used a Phomemo thermal printer with sticker paper.

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