I am making a zine, finally.

There’s a zine showcase held twice a year in my little city that I go to and I have been wanting to make something for it for awhile now. So, I did. Or at least, I am currently struggling to make it.

I started out with format because I wanted something that wouldn’t be too expensive to make and found a few ideas for 1 piece of paper zines that could be folded in many ways depending on how many pages you wanted. I settled on 8 pages on A4 (standard sheet).

Then, I had to think about content. Since I live in Japan, I thought that I couldn’t really write a story zine in English because it might be too complicated for my intended audience. I had considered a collection of my art that I have posted on instagram but that seemed a little boring. I finally settled on writing a very simple story in English that most Japanese people could probably understand if they were so inclined to try.

It took me about a week to figure out layout, story, and the art. A lot of self-doubt and self-hatred at my lack of ability to fully realize my vision but I eventual got most of it drawn, formatted and written. It’s really cute and tiny.

My next step is to carve flower stamps to add color to the zine. I am looking forward to trying my hand at something new.