zinesbyscout

I'm getting into making my own zines and yours are a big inspirations (pretty much the first zines I've ever seen and they look awesome), so thank you so much for that! Do you happen to have tips for beginners by any chance?

hi i have not checked my asks in a while so i am so sorry i missed this nearer the time. first of all though this has genuinely made my day so thank you so so much.

my first and most important piece of advice is don't be afraid to make a "bad" zine, zines aren't meant to be perfect and sometimes what you think is going to be a bad zine ends up coming together into something you're really happy with (for me this sometimes doesn't come until i scan it) and even if the zine doesn't turn out how you wanted you have still made something and gotten closer to figuring out what you do/don't like both in terms of look and techniques to use. you by no means have to share the zines you're not happy with but you might also find that some of your least favourite zines are really loved by someone else.

my second piece of advice would be to practice giving yourself restrictions. once you get started it is very easy to end up with a lot of materials to work with and there's nothing wrong with that but sometimes that many options can be overwhelming and hold you back from creating because you want to find the 'perfect' image or background. by limiting yourself to maybe just a couple magazines it forces you to get creative with how you use what you have and also can stave off some perfectionism because your options are limited so you're never going to make a 'perfect' zine.

thirdly, when it comes to finding materials there are so many options for so cheap. it can be tempting when getting into a new hobby to go out and buy a lot of things that you might use but with zines especially you can find so much for free or incredibly cheap. some of my favourite free sources of zine supplies are leaflets/magazines/catalogues whoch you can often find in supermarkets and train/bus stations, diy shops such as b&q and wickes if you're in the uk that sell paint will often have swatches of all the paint colours that are free to take home and these are fun ways to add background colours and you can also find inspiration in the paint names, another type of free samples you can get are wallpaper samples, if you're in the uk dunelm lets you order five wallpaper samples at a time for completely free including postage, if you want to order more justbwait until the previous one has shipped so they don't get cancelled.

if you make a zine which you don't like because of the colours see how it looks in greyscale or black and white, if there's enough texture/contrast this can make the zine look really cool and gets rid of any colour combinations you feel are ruining it

if you want to share your zines but don't have the ability to do that irl you can out them all in a google drive and set them sk they're accessible to anyone with the google drive link and let people print them for themselves. there are also zine libraries and things that might print your zines to have in their library, the london zine box offers free printing and distribution of your zines both in their bixes and at events and you don't need to be based anywhere near london (or even in the uk as far as i know).

my final piece of advice would be to enjoy the process and make zines about whatever you want, don't get caught up in thinking what other people will want to see or wether your zine is too specific/niche. the joy of zines is that they let you make and share art about your own experiences/interests with anyone and there will be people that are interested because they want to learn about other people and what they experience and think and enjoy.

crawlers are back so i made a quick and simple afraid to die zine with just some stamps and lace (i am obsessed with the little lace butterfly i found second hand)

i went to a zine workshop focused on clothing and identity so i finally started (then went home and finished) a zine about how i became known as that one green guy (spoilers: i blame bears in trees). i always make such different style zines at workshops, probably because of the more limited material, and i should really try to let myself make zines like this at home as well.

if you can't read my handwriting:

Page one: My decent into greeness began when I needed a new colour to dye my hair after a botched attempt to go from red to blue. Around this time Bears in Trees released 'I can't see anything I don't like about you' with the line 'botched green hair in disrepair' I had to GO GREEN

Page two: After this I continued to wear my usual clothes - not much green. Until I bought this hoodie at a Bears in Trees gig. That gig was hugely important to me for sentimental reasons - first it was my first Bears in Trees gig as an adult, first where I knew I was surrounded by friends but also when I started to wear more green

Page three: The other item of clothing to turn me green were these trousers I bought at a folk festival with my Mum.

Page four: By now it was August 2024 and I was rapidly becoming 'the green guy' as many people know me today. I started dyeing white t-shirts green and buying white and beige band merch with the intent of dyeing it green. I still do this and my bathroom cupboard is full of Dr Pepper bottles containing green dye. I refer to this as my 'unsupervised phil era' after amazingphil of dan and phil

Thank you for the zine <3

I really liked the idea I had for this zine, using the ocean patterned paper and campfire lino stamp but I think this really confirms that I don't like handwritten text in the vast majority of my zines because I don't really like this one very much

me and oomfs were assigning each other bugs and it got me to finally make the dan zine i had been thinking about doing since the song came out

i am cold zine !!! i didn't have much of a vision for this other than that i wanted it printed in blue on grey. i decided to just use encyclopedia page cut outs for each page and basic text over the top and i actually really like how it turned out.

my second attempt at multi layered printing and i am quite happy with it. i wanted beach images for the background (i intend for the cover and beating in my chest pages to be the other way around but i actually quite like it this way too) then basic collage on the top. after printing those layers i then added the text amd scanned a third time before printing onto blue paper. i decided i liked the misaligned look so didn't worry too much about making this perfect.

i originally had a different plan for this zine but then i saw the tiktoks they were posting to it with the colourful plasters and decided to do this instead because i started making the i see blue zines with a week until tour and needed something quick but cute. the background scanned as more green than i would have liked but i am still happy with this zine.