The Magic of a “Zine”

"Colorful paper brings life and joy to every creation, weaving a vibrant tapestry of imagination and creativity."

Have you ever had an overflow of paper scraps in your creative space and not have the faintest idea what to do with them?

This is me. I have a boatload of bits and pieces of paper scraps left over from other projects that I often can’t figure out what to do with. And oftentimes I can’t bear to part with such pretty pieces of scraps so into the small little collection bin on my desk they go, with the hopes of finding a forever home in a future project.

Enter “Zines.”

Yesterday, we had our weekly Art Club meeting and the girls and I wanted to work on something different. We’ve been working on so many different projects over the last few months that we wanted something that was a little mindless but still creative and fun to work on. So we decided to make some “zines.”

By definition and according to Wikipedia:

“A zine is a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a copy machine. Zines are the product of either a single person or of a very small group, and are popularly photocopied into physical prints for circulation.”

Out came the scraps and doo-dads and we got started. Now, according to the definition above, you can copy these zines and circulate them around. We actually chose not to do this, but instead adhere our pages together, making them thicker, so that our final piece was more of a book/journal type of deal. Both C and J made theirs with their college daughters in mind, planning to send these as happy mail/Valentine’s to their girls to brighten their study-filled days! Yours truly worked on some for my own kiddos to give to them in their Valentine packages.

These are a super fun and addictive activity that I really love creating and I’ll plan to share on a livestream so you can watch my process and how I create them. Click here to check out YouTube and the LiveStream.