A collaged zine

I thought I would have a go at another sort of zine.  One with a collaged background.

Collect together a variety of papers that have a similar colour.  Use book paper, patterned tissue paper, maps, music paper etc.

Tear up the papers into small, but not to small, pieces.  Very small pieces take longer to glue down!

Take an A4 sheet of paper and start glueing the torn papers to the A4 paper.  Use PVA or gel medium.  Put a layer of glue on the A4 sheet and over the top of the torn piece to ensure contact.  Make sure the collage pieces overlap with the next piec.

Cover the whole A4 sheet.  It's better to let the collage pieces go off the edge of the paper.

When the glue is dry trim the edges.

Take some gesso or white acrylic paint, and wipe it over the collaged papers.  I used a wet wipe.  You could use an old credit card.  Doing this blends all the papers together.   When the gesso is dry put the paper under a weight to flatten out ready for the next activity.

Make the zine as in previous posts.  Fold length ways from the collaged side

Fold inwards from the untouched side.

Then fold to make your zine.

WIth this zine, I'm going to make pockets.  You could just have 2 pockets with the tops open or as in this zine have two top opening pockets and two side opening pockets.  I've used double sided tape so you can see where to put your glue.

To make the inserts I found some Kraft paper tags.  The one on the right was a perfect fit so I cut the other smaller one to match.

I tried one out in the side pocket but decided it was too narrow.

I measured the size of the pocket and drew out the rectangles on the larger Kraft tag.  You can use any type of card.

To cut matching 'shoulders', put your two cards on top of each other.

The cut one corner off both pieces of card.

Turn the bottom card over and using the top card as a template cut the corners off at each side.

Punch holes in the tags.  You can thread string, ribbon or wool through the holes.

Your collaged zine is all ready to decorate with words, pictures, photographs.  Whatever takes your fancy!

Have fun!

Thanks for joining me today.

Bernice

Using your zine

In my last post I showed you how to make a zine of zine with a woven spine.  Here are some photos of what I have done with it.

I used printed paper stickers

And transparent stickers

I've left empty pages for sticking pictures in or doing some journaling.

I stamped with waterproof ink.

If your sticker is too wide for the page then put it up the other way!

This isn't finished.  It will be an ongoing project.  I might give it to a friend.  Who knows!

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

A stitched zine

Last time I showed you how to make a cover for your zine of zines.  This time I'm going to make a stitched one.

I painted 5 pieces of A4 (letter) sized paper with watered down acrylic paint and put cling film on the top.  You could use watercolour paint instead.  If you use acrylic remember to take the cling film of before the paint dries completely.

Then I folded and cut the papers in the way I showed you in the first blog post on zines.  I glued the pages together in each zine and then sewed through the spine of each one.

First you find where the middle of the spine is on each zine, and make a hole with a big needle or a pokey tool.  Measure 3.5cms each side of the middle and make another hole

Take your threaded needle from the outside of the zine into the inside using the middle hole.

Take your needle from the inside to the outside through the top hole.  Make sure the end of the thread still hangs outside.

Take the needle to the bottom hole and into the inside.

Come back up through the centre hole with the two sets of threads either side of the long stitch.

Tie a knot in the two loose threads so that it holds the long stitch.

Make sure you pull the trheads tight before you tie the knot.  It should look like this

And NOT like this

Put all your threaded zines together.  Hold them together with an elastic band or bulldog clips.

Using another thread - I like to use variegated - start weaving in and out of the stitches on the spine.  Leave the end of the thread loose for now.

As you weave in and out use the needle to push the lines up tight to each other.  Don't pull the thread to tight at the sides as you want an even edge and width.

When you run out of thread, push the needle up the part you have already woven

Cut the thread off and start a new thread as you did in the beginning.

Work as closely as you can to the knots.

When you get to the base of the weaving take the thread up through the weaving and cut it off.  Where you started wach thread there will be tails.  Thread these into the weaving.

The woven spine.  You can leave the spine threads as they are, or cut them shorter or maybe add beads to them.

When you open the zines you will be able to see a bit of the weaving.

Next time we'll look at how we might use the zine.  Yes, I know I said that last time, but I got sidetracked by the weaving.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice