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.

A hand holds the "Urban Legends" zine. The cover design has black text on a black and white collage background.

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 (U.S. only).

If you’re outside the U.S. and interested in a copy of the zine, please message me.

A page of "Urban Legends" titled "Ogopogo." Black text on paper.
A drawing of a woman with long hair, seated on the ground. She has a bow on her back and she's holding a hunting tool.
A page of "Urban Legends" titled "Crazy Jones." Black text on paper.

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.

A hand holds a mini zine titled "What's a zine? A brief introduction." The title is printed in black on white paper.

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).

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.

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.

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

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."