making zines

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). Download zine on Ko-fi The PDF is sized to print on one sheet of 8.5 x 11-inch paper (standard U.S. letter size).

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Original or the clone

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. 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.

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Halloween collage

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. 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.

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How to lay out a zine in Canva

When I worked on my zine, “Timers for Travelers,” I finished the writing first. I knew I wanted illustrations throughout the zine, some hand-drawn and some digital. I decided to lay out the zine in Canva so that I could combine text, digital elements, and hand-drawn elements. I’m really happy with how the zine came out, so I want to document my process. This is less a tutorial of Canva and more a walk-through of how I used it to put together my zine.

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