making zines

How to design a mini zine in Canva

/ Process, Zines /

I made tutorials that show how to set up a design file in Canva to make an 8-page mini zine. The tutorials go over how to set up guides and what the page order will be. Everything in the tutorials is done with the free version of Canva.

There’s a video version you can watch on YouTube.

And a PDF version you can download for free.

Download PDF tutorial

Here are a few preview pages from the PDF:

If you have any questions or feedback on these tutorials, please send me a message.

Original or the clone

/ Zines /

The Philly Zine Fest is accepting submissions for their Anthology zine. I made a collage with a bit of text I’ve been waiting to use somewhere.

Black and white collage that shows a woman's face, cut in half. One hand is above her head and the other hand is resting on the opposite cheek. An eye is in the top right corner. A different eye is in the bottom left corner. The text says, "Some of you have never figured out if you're the original or the clone, and it shows."

The background is photocopied aluminum foil (for real!). I simply cut a piece of aluminum foil and made a copy of it. Then I crinkled the aluminum foil a bit and made another copy. That became the background for this page.

The woman’s face and hands are stock photos taken by Ospan Ali, available on Unsplash.

The text is something I wrote a while ago and hadn’t found a place for…until now. 😉

This collage is a very different style for me, and I really like how it came out! The great thing about submitting to zines is that there’s room to experiment. It feels like low stakes, since it’s only one page.

Halloween collage

/ Zines /

I contributed a page to Webs Across the Campfire, vol. 2, a special Halloween zine from Vlasinda Productions. Copies are available in their shop.

For my page, I wanted to make a collage. I had paper from my ink color experiments to work with. I cut these into shapes for clouds, a moon, and pumpkins.

Paper cut-outs of purple clouds, an orange moon, spider webs, and pumpkins.

For the spider webs, I drew on black cardstock with a white gel pen. Then I photocopied the webbing, so I had sections to work with.

Here’s the finished page, with text I printed and glued on, a clip art house I modified, and black cardstock for the hill.

A collage of a haunted house with pumpkins and spider webbing. The background is a purple and blue sky, with clouds and an orange moon. The text says "A dark and scary night is not so scary. Sometimes fear is simply the absence of knowledge."
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