Behind the Scenes 📗✂️ Publishing My Own Underground Magazine

I love the feeling of a project coming together. This zine in particular has been months in the making and finally I am making last changes to the final draft. That is the thing about zines; they are ever changing! This may only seem like the final iteration now. Months or years from now I may very well change things up entirely.

A few months ago I made a totally handwritten version of this zine, listed them on my Etsy page, and -- to my great surprise -- they sold out! I have been using Etsy for years and rarely had this happened. Natural skin care, it seems, is having a moment and I am so glad to provide recipes and knowledge to the zinester community.

There was only one problem. I worried that my handwritten musings and recipes were a little hard to read. So, for the sake of clarity. I am now going back through the original final copy of the zine to sharpen up the images and type in the recipes. Elements of my handwritten titles and, of course, the collages still remain to keep the spirit of zines alive in this hand made booklet.

As a modern artist I enjoy collaborating between the cut & paste method that characterizes zines as well as the more modern tools like photoshop. And I can tell you that taking the time to format and line up the pages with the help of computer designs saves a ton of time & wasted paper when it is time to print.

And truly, printing out the pages I have worked on for so long is a welcome sight! Rather than printing a dozen or so at a time I have decided to go big and print 50 booklets which I will take with me on my upcoming trip and to restock my Etsy page with.

Then I ventured outside to my garden workspace. As an artists/writer who works from home I really appreciate the possibilities of working from my front yard just as often as my desk. The only danger is gusts of wind that whip pages off the desk and bird droppings from above. Luckily the wind was relatively calm and the birds were elsewhere.

I still have so much more work to do, hundreds of pages to cut out and the final edits for the final two pages, then binding before the zine is complete. This is the major difference between DIY publishing vs writing online and sending my work off to a publisher ~ I am involved in every single step of the process, and I love it!