What is a zine?
A zine, pronounced “zeen” (like the end of the word magazine), is a homemade self-published booklet. Zines are usually created by cutting and gluing text and images onto a sheet of paper, which is then folded and/or stapled.
When experiencing anxiety, your brain often stays in the future, catastrophising and worrying over things you can’t control. This Zine activity can be a technique for anxiety as it focusses the mind on creating and stay in the present moment.
Although zines have been around since the 1770s, they became more widely available in the 1970s when they were used to promote music that was not being covered by music media, particularly punk.
There are no rules for making zines. They can be about anything you’d like, and as simple or complicated as you want, really! There are all kinds of zines out there, some are funny, some are bold, beautiful, or meaningful. There are zines about things people really like (fanzines), cooking zines with awesome recipes, comic zines, art zines, and zines where people share their daily life (personal zines or perzines).
Making a zine is all about creativity, discovery and self-expression. People use zines to explore the things that are happening in their life. You can make a zine to help you understand, document and elaborate difficult experiences (like in our example Lockdown Things). You can make a zine to rant about things that make you angry. You can make a zine to celebrate yourself, others important to you, or the things that give you joy.
What do I need?
You only really need these:
✔️ Paper
✔️ Scissors
✔️ Something to write/draw with
The rest is up to you! You can use any materials you like; my personal favourites are:
✔️ Old magazines & newspapers for collage (images and words/letters)
✔️ Glue stick
✔️ Pencils, crayons, markers, highlighters
✔️ Watercolour or diluted paint for quick backgrounds
✔️ Stickers
✔️ Stamps
How to make a Zine
You can print out Lockdown Things template and follow the same instructions to make your own version of it!
Step 1: Fold your sheet of paper in half. Then fold it again into quarters, and again into eighths
Step 2: Open your paper and then fold it in half. Cut across halfway across the middle starting from the fold
Step 3: Open your paper, which should have a slit in the middle. Fold your paper along the crease with the slit (lengthwise).
Step 4: Hold the paper at both ends and push the ends in towards each other. The sections you made by folding will now fold into each other and form an eight-page booklet.
Step 5: Now you turn your blank booklet into a zine! There are no rules, the content can be just images, just text or a combination of both, it is completely up to you. You can make a sketch of your content before making it or go with your creative flow and just wing it.
Step 6: You’ve made your first zine! You can keep it for yourself, give the original to someone as a gift, or photocopy your zine and share it with your friends and/or family.
- Have you heard of a Zine before?
- Why don’t you try doing one today?
- Send your Zine into us if you want to see it on our website.
