I love making small books and was recently inspired by Katie Licht who at this writing has created two small zines (a zine is a self-published, inexpensively produced publication; pronounced like magazine). Katie’s first zine contained tips for making one so I copied her format: 8-1/2 x 11″ paper, 2 sheets/2-sided + a cover. Final size is 4-1/4″ x 5-1/2″. Motivated by a recent conversation with friends, I chose ‘personal and spiritual growth’ as the theme, and drew on my collection of quotes and a box full of paper scraps and old photos and illustrations to cut and paste the final product.
In this photo you can see how I began: laying out scraps of paper and illustration. Note how I’ve used tiny pieces of a post-it to number the pages; even though it’s a small booklet I needed to keep the order in mind.
Here’s a close-up of a detail: an old black and white photo with part of a rub-on added and some text.
The photo below shows a completed page, with illustration and quotes as well as the hand-bound 3 hole pamphlet stitch.
I took my finished paste-ups to Staples to copy in black and white; then added small touches of color throughout. I assembled the cut pages at home and here’s what the finished small book/zine looks like.
