How to cut and fold a mini zine

This mini style zine is super easy to make. All you need is a sheet of regular printer paper and a pair of scissors. Follow along with the video below and if you need written directions, you can find those below!

1/ Start by folding your paper the long way (hotdog style).

2/ Now fold this in half so it’s half as long, then do this fold again once more.

3/ Unfold your sheet of paper, then re-fold it the short way (hamburger style.

4/ Grab your scissors and cut along the center fold, but make sure to only cut halfway, to the center, where the fold lines intersect.

5/ Now unfold again, then fold it hotdog style once more. You’ll see a diamond shape form where you cut the paper.

6/ hold the ends of the paper and push your hands towards each other to flatten that diamond, then fold everything along the crease lines you created in step two, and you’ve got your zine!

If you’ve printed off a zine and folded it, your zine is made! If you’re making a zine yourself from scratch, you’re now ready to start filling in your pages with all the info and/or creativity you’re ready to share with the world.

If you want to grab my little creativity zine, click here to download it!

I want fewer followers. You heard me right.

This time last year I believe I had 230,000 followers on instagram. A little less than 200k of those followed me based on one viral reel.

Today my follower number clicked from 222k to 221k and every time that happens I get a little jolt of joy. It sounds counterintuitive— most people want that number to go up, right? 

But here’s the thing, every time someone peaces out and decides my online space isn’t for them, it means there are more folks here for whom my space IS for them.

The internet basically begs you to “niche down” as a content creator. “It’s how you’ll get more followers!” They say. “Make viral content to grow your account!” they say. But when a reel goes viral you’re basically niching down in the most granular sense— you become this one singular piece of content. That one thing is why a hundred thousand people follow you. Holy shit, right?

But you aren’t a single piece of content and neither am I. What you do, or what I do, or what anyone does is so much more than what can be contained in a viral piece of content or a “niched down” account.

So the more I show up in my wholeness on my account, the more people will be like, “oh weird, I’m not here for this” and that’s GREAT. I cannot stress that enough. It’s so so great when people decide you aren’t their cup of tea.

And the truth is, I’m so wildly multifaceted, to the point where I don’t have the bandwidth to pursue and embrace all my passions simultaneously. At least not while being a decent mom and wife and friend. So the things I enjoy and pursue will vacillate and ebb and flow. I’ll get a spurt of ADHD hyperfixation on something and run with it. I’ll rediscover something I loved as a kid and deep dive. I’ll feel a tug towards a different creative expression and follow the pull. And I think that’s all normal and ok.

We’ve been taught that it’s normal to pick a career and then do that one thing for 30+ years and that’s the responsible adult way of being, but it doesn’t have to be that way and I don’t think everyone thrives in that format. I know I don’t.

Watching your follower count go down little by little isn’t necessarily a universal experience, especially if you aren’t a content creator, but the idea of showing up in your wholeness and authenticity, and letting those who aren’t here for it fall away--that totally is. I think we’ve all felt like at times we’ve had to edit or censor ourselves to fit into the mold of what a certain group deemed appropriate. Maybe it was high school. Maybe it was a job. Maybe it was a relationship.

What I do know is that creativity thrives when you allow yourself to show up authentically. Messy and imperfect and joyful and true.  And, you know what? While my overall follower number is going down, while maybe 1500 folks left this month… 500 joined! 500 folks who are jiving with and aligned with me and my art and music vibe and my values. 500 folks who feel welcomed and seen by the community I've created. And that is so much more meaningful than some vanity number.

Your authenticity will cull your audience for you, 

and that's a good thing!

Your screenshot folder is waiting...

I used to do these annual bucket lists where I'd make a list of, for example, 27 things to do before I turn 28… 28 things to do before 29… 29 before 30. You get the idea. I think I probably stopped doing this around 29 because, well, the list does tend to get longer each year. I was reading back through old blog posts and saw a mention of my 27 before 28 list, and how on that list I'd put “create new art and submit it to a gallery for exhibition.”  I definitely didn't accomplish that one, and now here I am realizing that ten years later, at 37, I've got the same thing on my *unofficial* 37 before 38 list. Sometimes having a blog for a decade and a half is cool, and sometime it reminds you of all the goals you never actually accomplished. But in a way, it feels nice to know that this dream is still percolating inside me. I'm still wanting to be a “real” artist, even though I've put it off for a decade.
 

In the past six months I've screen-shotted dozens of calls for submissions from galleries, magazines, and journals. Of course, most of them have just sat in the graveyard of my screen shots album on my phone, but I've dubbed 2024 the year of submitting, so I'm dragging that album out and actually submitting my work-- whether its poems to a local literary journal, a mural proposal for the city, an article for a magazine, an application for an artist residency… I'm actually doing the thing instead of just thinking “oh, I want to do that!" then screen shotting it and forgetting it forever. You miss 100% of the shots you never take, right? And at least I don't have to compete against all the other people out there who just screen shotted the call for submissions and then left those photos to die in their phone, right? 

So whatever the thing is that you've been screen shotting and thinking about doing, but never taking the leap… hey, maybe now's the time! Maybe 2024 is the year you resurrect your screen shot album and start taking action on those little dreams sitting in there.

One of the things that I took action on from my opportunity screenshots… Tacoma Wayzgoose! Wayzgoose is an annual printmaking event here in Tacoma, and besides having tons of printmakers hosting booths as vendors, they also do giant linoleum block prints that are printed using a steamroller. So cool right? I’ve always wanted to do Wayzgoose, so this year when the application opened, I threw my hat in the ring. And guess what? I was picked as one of the steamroller print artists! So for the next month I’ll be feverishly carving away at this absolutely gigantic sheet of linoleum. I’m so so excited. Jack took this photo of me after picking up my sheet of linoleum and I’m not intimidated in the slightest by the fact that it is nearly as big as I am. Nope. Not at all…

All that to say, if you never ask, the answer is always no. So don’t give yourself an automatic rejection by never putting yourself out there in the first place. Now excuse me while I get back to carving…