Spaced Out is now available in a digital format! You can download the zine as a PDF on Ko-fi.
2024 zine recap
I make zines for fun, and I want zines to be primarily for fun, so I don’t set specific goals each year. Even so, I’m really happy with what I accomplished in the past year!
Here’s a rundown of zine-related things I did in 2024.
Zines I made
I made 10 zines!
Mini zines:
- Useless Venn diagrams
- The antidote to social media
- So You Met Your Past Self
- How to make a mini zine
- What’s a zine?
- Left-brained art
Quater-page zines:
Contributor zines (that I organized):
Zine contributions
I contributed pages to these zines:
Events
- Local zine fest - I was a vendor, and I taught a workshop on making mini zines.
- Fall Fest at a local library - I led a zine-making station.
- Local creative studio - I taught a workshop on making zines.
- Local college - I spoke to a graphic design class about making zines.
- Two zine hangouts at local spots - These were great events to spend time making zines with people. Very casual hangouts.
Collage zines I made at events
Miscelleanous
I joined the zine line of the Smallweb Subway. This is a webring themed after subway systems.
Not a zine, but collaboration with a zine friend. I submitted a short story to a podcast, VLASINDA’s Desolate Library.
I’m looking forward to making more zines and continuing to connect with people in 2025!
Spaced Out zine
One more zine for 2024. 🚀
“Spaced Out” is a quarter-page zine that collects writing and illustrations that are inspired by outer space.
Illustrations were hand-drawn in black and white, and color elements were added with space-themed washi tape. All text is typed.
Details:
- 12 pages (including covers)
- Finished zine measure 5.5 inches high x 4.5 inches wide
- Printed in full color on white paper
- Folded by hand and bound with staples
Paper copies are available in my Etsy shop (U.S. only), and I’m open to trading (anywhere mail can go).
Spaced Out is also available in a digital format on Ko-fi.
Here are some of the pages:
If you’re interested in how I made the washi tape pieces, I wrote a blog post about my process.
I made holographic stickers to go with this zine! This is an updated design of my “I need some space” stickers. Every physical copy of “Spaced Out” comes with a sticker.
I added a note to the back of my zine about not using AI.
I’ve been seeing some artists clarify that they don’t use AI in their work, and I think it’s an important distinction to make. I already have a webpage about why I don’t use AI. Now I have a note in print, too.
Knowledge is
Here’s a collage zine I started at a local zine hangout on Thursday and finished tonight.
I like experimenting during zine-making events, so this style is very different from the zines I usually make.
The images are pretty random. 😂 I was looking more at colors and patterns, with less regard for items in each image. Text is inspired by old card catalog entries (cards were on the tables, among archival materials available to use).
Happy Doctor Who day!
I still have a few copies of Hipster Doctor Who.
It’s available in my Etsy shop, or you can message me if you’re interested in trading. 🙂
Collage background for a zine
I’m working on a new mini zine about astronaut food. For the background, I wanted to collage a bunch of images of stars, the night sky, and related textures.
I collected images out of an issue of Astronomy magazine, and I gathered some illustrations and scrapbook paper I had.
Here’s a photo of some of the images.
Here’s a photo of what the collage looks like.
Next I’ll scan this into my computer, add more images digitally, and then add text (…which I still have to write).
Urban Legends is now available as a digital zine! You can download the PDF on Ko-fi for free (or pay what you want). 👻🎃
Urban Legends made it to Australia!
I sent a copy of Urban Legends to Sea Green Zines, since she helped get the word out about open submissions.
Check out the video review on Sea Green Zines’ YouTube channel. Urban Legends is about 25 minutes in.
There’s a whole other set of zines in the video before that if you want to check that out, too. 😃
Left-brained art
“Left-brained art” is a mini zine that includes tips for how to make art without having to plan all the details up front. Each page includes a tip and brief explanation.
This zine encourages you to work with the materials you already have and not worry about what people will think of the finished work.
I drew the background by hand with markers. Layout and text in Canva.
Copies are available in my Etsy shop (U.S. only). I’m also open to trading! (Message me.)
Full text in the zine:
Front cover
Left-brained art
Page 1
If you are a left-brained person (like me!), sometimes making art feels difficult.
You want there to be order. You want to sort out all the details from the start. And if you can’t do that, you feel stuck.
Here are some things I try to remember so I don’t get stuck.
Maybe these will be helpful to you, too.
Page 2
Simply start
Easier said than done.
Try making something (anything) before you decide on what the end result will be.
One idea might spark another idea..and then another.
Page 3
What’s “good”?
Don’t get hung up on what’s “good.”
Whatever is trending or popular for the moment doesn’t matter.
Make what interests you.
“Comparison is the thief of joy.” – Theodore Roosevelt
Page 4
No plan is okay
You don’t have to plan everything. (It feels uncomfortable. I know.)
Figure it out as you go.
You can take it one step at a time.
Page 5
What you have
In most cases, you don’t need special tools to start a creative project.
You can start with what you already have.
“The best camera is the one you have with you.” – Chase Jarvis
Page 6
You, first
Make stuff for yourself.
If other people like it, that’s a bonus.
If no one else likes it, you’re still learning and growing.
Either way, you win.
My first zine was a joke
“So you met your doppelgänger” was the first zine I made, back in December 2019. It was a fun little thing to give to my friends at work for New Year’s Day. I was playing with the idea of “new year, new you.”
I wanted the zine to read like a straightforward guide but at the same time, it’s dry humor.
The stick figure drawings add to the effect: The zine seems serious but it’s actually silly.
Then I posted the zine online, made a few more zines, and started an Etsy shop. “So you met your doppelgänger” was getting positive reactions from people. Copies were selling on Etsy.
In 2023, I went to my first zine fest. People stopped by my table and picked up “So you met your doppelgänger.” They laughed when they read it and said it was clever. It was the first time I saw strangers’ reactions to my zines, in person.
Five years after I made it, “So you met your doppelgänger” is still my most popular zine. There are over 300 copies of it out in the world.
And it started as a joke.
When I made “So you met your doppelgänger,” I had no idea people would find it online and purchase copies…and continue to do that for years.
So whatever you’re making, share it. You can’t predict how people will react to your work.
Share it, and see how it goes.
Test copies
This week I’ve been making minor edits to my new mini zine, Left-brained art.
After I drafted text and images, I printed a test copy. Then I used a red pen to mark edits and changes.
Back to Canva to make edits and then print a new test copy.
More red pen.
Repeat until I’m happy with how everything looks.
Contributor zine: Urban Legends
“Urban Legends” is a quarter-page zine that collects art and writing about urban legends, myths, and folklore. Eighteen people contributed stories, poetry, illustrations, and collages. Work was submitted from the U.S., Canada, Scotland, Belgium, and Germany
The finished zine is 36 pages (including covers); 4.25" wide x 5.5" high; printed in black & white; and bound with staples.
The cover is white cardstock. Interior pages are 24 lb white paper.
I’m mailing copies to contributors this week. Limited copies are available in my Etsy shop.
Urban Legends is also available as a digital zine. You can download it for free on Ko-fi (or pay what you want).
Check out a few of the pages:
Zine station success
Yesterday I ran a zine-making station at a public library fundraiser. 🙂
The library had a Fall Fair with a bake sale, raffles, magic show, and games. Arts and crafts tables were inside the library. Here’s the zine-making station.
The library provided magazines, scrapbook paper, markers, glue sticks, scissors, and plain white paper. I brought copies of How to make a mini zine and What’s a zine?
This is the first time I’ve done a zine event with kids. Having collage materials definitely helps, so kids don’t have to write something on the spot.
Two girls spent about an hour and a half at the table, making two zines each, because they said they were having so much fun. 🥹
I think if I do more kid-focused zine events, I might make some kind of template that they can fill in. Having more of a guide might be a nice option besides having a blank piece of paper.
Here’s a zine I made during some downtime.
What's a zine?
“What’s a zine?” is an 8-page mini zine that you can download and print on your own. It includes a brief introduction to zines: what zines are, some historical highlights, and common formats.
The zine is available on Ko-fi for free (or pay what you want).
The PDF is sized to print on one sheet of 8.5 x 11-inch paper (standard U.S. letter size).
This zine is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), which means you’re welcome to distribute and share copies for non-commercial use.
If you don’t know how to fold this kind of zine, search for “how to fold an 8-page zine” on YouTube to find tutorials.
Washi tape as collage pieces
I’m working on a new zine, and I want to share some process pics with you. 🙂 I’m making pages with black and white illustrations and then using washi tape to make collage elements.
Here’s how I’m doing it.
- Draw the picture in black ink.
- Lay a piece of tracing paper over the drawing. With a pencil, outline the area where washi tape will go. For this page, I wanted a curved shape around the planet.
- Use washi tape to cover the area outlined in pencil. I kept even lines of tape but you could overlap pieces or rip the tape into smaller pieces.
- Flip the tracing paper over. Use scissors to cut along the pencil line.
- Glue the washi tape piece onto the drawing.
Zine: So You Met Your Past Self
“So You Met Your Past Self” includes tips for what to do when you meet a past version of yourself. This fictional zine is a handy guide for the time traveler in your life (even when that’s you).
This zine is available on Etsy (U.S.) only.
I made the background for this zine by hand. I diluted blue fountain pen ink in water. Then I painted the ink on to watercolor paper.
After the paper dried, I drew an abstract design with a dark blue marker and white gel pen.
This kind of line drawing is a technique I learned from Katie Gebely.
First you draw dots on the page, at random. Then you connect the dots with straight lines. That’s what I did with the dark blue marker. Then I added shorter lines in white gel pen.
Visuals in Barbie and Pleasantville
I wrote an essay for The Wrench Dispatch: The Movie Issue about visuals in Barbie and Pleasantville. The zine came out in January 2024 and collected essays about recent movies.
The essay is about 900 words, so I’m going old school and putting it under a Read More. So retro.
Five ways the Barbie movie uses visuals to share information about the world
The Barbie movie starts with a reference to the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and that’s how I knew that visuals would be important in this movie.
Barbie isn’t the first movie to share so much information about the world through visuals, but it’s the first one I’ve seen in a while to do it so well. Pleasantville (1998, directed by Gary Ross and starring Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon) uses color and 1950s sitcom tropes to share information about the world.
Let’s take a look at how these movies use visuals.
1. Saturated colors are positive
In Barbie Land, colors are saturated and bright. The color palette leans heavily on pinks (so many shades of pink!). The sky is a perfect shade of blue, and the grass is a perfect shade of green. Nothing is out of place.
When Barbie and Ken go to the real world, colors are not as saturated. They feel more grounded. The outfits that Barbie and Ken wear while rollerblading have neon colors and busy patterns. They stick out immediately in the real world, even though the outfits would have been normal in Barbie Land.
In Pleasantville, David and Jennifer are transported to Pleastantville, a black and white 1950s-style sitcom. When everything is normal in Pleasantville, objects and people are in black and white. As Jennifer starts influencing the town, objects take on saturated colors, starting with a red rose. Characters appear in color after they express themselves or reach their potential.
Barbie uses colors to differentiate between Barbie Land (vibrant colors) and the real world (grounded colors). Pleastantville uses the transition from black and white to color to show changes in the sitcom world and characters.
2. No liquids in Barbie Land
There aren't any liquids in Barbie Land to fit the concept that there aren’t any liquids in Barbie playsets. Barbie takes a shower, but no water comes out of the shower head. She gets a carton of milk from the fridge, but the carton is empty. Barbie can walk across the pool because the surface is a sheet of blue plastic. And even the beach doesn’t have water, which is why Ken bounces off a rigid wave when he tries running into the ocean.
Pleasantville does have liquids. There's maple syrup at the breakfast table, and characters drink soda at the diner. But one thing Pleasantville is missing is toilets. In one scene, Jennifer goes into the bathroom at the diner and pushes a stall door open. It’s an empty space. This is a reference to TV standards in real life. In the 1950s and 1960s, American TV shows did not show toilets. It was considered bad taste.
3. Vehicles are props
Barbie knows how to drive but her car seems to go on its own. In one scene, she waves to other Barbies and even takes both hands off the wheel. The car continues on a perfect path on the road. Also, the car’s rear-view mirror is a sticker, playing into the idea that it’s there for show instead of function. The car is a toy and Barbie doesn’t actually need to look in the rear-view mirror while she drives.
In Pleasantville, the firefighters drive the firetruck, and they know how to use the ladders to rescue cats. But they don’t know what the hoses are for, since there weren’t fires in Pleasantville before. The firemen are surprised that the hoses work, because they never needed to use them before.
4. No one uses the stairs
All the dream houses in Barbie Land have stairs, but no one uses them. Barbies appear on one floor and then a different floor, much like how a child would move a doll from one floor to another in a dollhouse.
A similar thing happens in the sitcom world in Pleasantville. Scenes take place upstairs or downstairs, but we do not follow characters up or down the stairs. This adds to the construct of sets for TV sitcoms.
5. Physical appearance isn’t natural
Barbies in Barbie Land move in realistic ways, but details remind us that Barbies are dolls. When Barbie steps out of her slippers, her feet stay on tip-toes, as if she’s wearing heels. When Barbie walks, sometimes she poses her hands with straightened fingers (much like a Barbie doll's hands), instead of relaxed hands. There are moments when Barbie sits up or stands where her upper body moves as one, reflecting how Barbie dolls bend at the waist but otherwise have limited upper body movement.
After Barbie has thoughts about death, she loses some of her doll-like features. On the beach, she notices her feet are now flat. When she’s talking to Weird Barbie, Barbie notices she has cellulite on her thighs. These two examples show Barbie connecting with the real world.
In Pleasantville, there aren’t body changes, but there is a notable shift in how people look and carry themselves. Early in the movie, characters conform to each other. The women are in cardigans and poodle skirts with perfect makeup and hair. The men are all clean cut in tidy clothes. Everyone has good posture.
As the movie progresses and colors seep in, we see variations in their outfits and more relaxed body language.
Barbie and Pleasantville use visuals to tell the audience about the world. Both movies deliver visual information through colors, deviations from objects in the real world (liquids, vehicles, and staircases), and physical appearance. All these visual details enrich the characters and stories in Barbie and Pleasantville.
Zine: How to make a mini zine
“How to make a mini zine” is an 8-page mini zine that you can download and print on your own. It includes a brief introduction to zines and instructions for how to fold an 8-page mini zine from a single sheet of paper.
The zine is available on Ko-fi for free (or pay what you want).
The PDF is sized to print on one sheet of 8.5 x 11-inch paper (standard U.S. letter size). No access to a color printer? No problem — the zine looks great in black and white, too.
To fold the zine, you can follow the instructions directly on the PDF. Or if you prefer video instructions, search for “how to fold an 8-page zine” on YouTube.
This zine is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), which means you’re welcome to distribute and share copies for non-commercial use.
Zine: The antidote to social media
“The antidote to social media” is a mini zine that looks at how negative things are outweighing positives on social media. But social media platforms are still a good way to find people to connect with. The zine suggests ways to work around the negative aspects of social media.
Copies are available on Etsy (U.S. only).
A lot of my zines start in a notebook page. Here’s where I started writing out what I wanted to include in this zine.
Zine: Children of Immigrants
“Children of Immigrants” is a half-page zine that collects art and writing about immigrant experiences. Thirteen people contributed stories, poetry, photography, illustrations, and collages.
The finished zine is 8.5" x 5.5", 28 pages (including covers), and printed in full color.
Everyone who contributed to the zine received a complimentary copy. The rest of the copies sold out, mostly at Lancaster Zine Fest. 😃 So, no more physical copies but you can download a digital version from Ko-fi for free or pay what you want.
Note: The digital version is a PDF meant to be read on a screen. The PDF is not formatted for printing and folding a paper copy.
