“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 I made both versions.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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 Text Message Moods 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.
I contributed a page to 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:
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.
II 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.
I have some sample fountain pen inks from The Goulet Pen Company that are colors I would not write with, but they are definitely colors I would draw with. A bright yellow ink reminds me of caution tape, so I created this zine of everyday dangers, with the danger highlighted in yellow on each page.
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. 🙂
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.
Full disclosure: I wanted to draw little Daleks and built the rest of this zine around them.
Bonus material
Planning
If I don't quite know what I want to write or draw, I plan out the zine on one page, like so:
This acts as a rough draft of my zine, so I can sort out what I want on each page.
Guiding
I like to work on zines with the page unfolded, so I use small sticky notes to label each page, like this:
This lets me work on pages in whatever order I want, without losing track of the order in the folded zine. And, having the page unfolded means I don't have to worry about ink bleeding through to another page.
A handy little zine for how to identify potential time travelers.
To make the background for this zine, I started with white cardstock paper. I used distress oxide inks (3 shades of blue) and blended them on the paper with a sponge applicator. This ink reacts with water, so I used a gear stencil and traced the gear shapes with a brush and plain water. That's what made the sort of ghost-looking gears. I used watercolor brush pens with the stencil to create the darker blue and purple gears. The blue and orange clock faces (most of the cover page and the clock faces on the inside pages) are scrapbook paper that I happened to have and fit perfectly. :)
“So You Met Your Doppelgänger” is a hand-drawn mini zine printed on an 8.5"x 11" sheet of paper and hand-folded. The finished zine is 8 pages and approximately 4.25 inches x 2.75 inches.
This fictional zine is a handy guide for what to do when you meet your doppelgänger (whether they’re a clone, from an alternate universe, or a time traveler).
This is my most popular zine! You can read it below. Physical copies are available to purchase on Etsy.
My inspiration for this zine came from my freshman year of college. The women who lived in the dorm next to me were both radio DJs and often had music blasting in their room. I didn’t mind—they had great taste!—and I found lots of songs I like through them.
The idea of finding music you like through people around you expanded into the pages of this zine.
I tried something new for me—monochrome. Only gray and black pens and markers in this zine. I like how it turned out.
