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…

Intentions for the new year

The majority of my 2023 was spent in a phase of rest. At the beginning of 2023 I chose the word “ease” as the focus of my year, while in the midst of a very non-easeful season. January of 2023 was quite possibly one of my least easeful months of my life, spent hustling to put together the final details of the DIY Awards Bash event. By the end of January, with the dust settling from a successful event, I was 100% burnt out. I hibernated for about a month, then tried to kickstart myself back into a phase of productivity, but ultimately ended up taking a sabbatical in the summer which I planned to be two months long, but ended up… well, if I’m honest, I’m still in it.

Those months of rest I spent recalibrating my priorities and deconstructing the hustle life I’d created for myself in exchange for one that allowed me to show up in a way that created room for so much creativity to blossom. Within that season of rest I found myself returning to creativity modes that I’d abandoned in the singleminded pursuit of the “DIY influencer” track. I found myself writing fiction and poetry again, illustration, and painting. I realized, to some dismay, that I needed to dismantle (or perhaps rather pivot?) my DIYer mantle for something more holistic and embodied. To create a space that allows me to fully explore all the avenues of my own creativity, including DIY and home renovation. I’ve been quietly and slowly working on a rebrand of sorts, while also figuring out what the end result of that branding overhaul will look like. And likely it will be an evolving overhaul, but for now the focus of that overhaul, and the focus of 2024 for me, is creating space for creativity to blossom, and finding joy through creativity in every day life.

In the past I’ve niched myself into specific creative spaces, but if you know me at all, you know pretty much my entire life is one creative project. If it can be done, I’m gonna do it in a creative way. Part of why I’ve loved the DIY niche is because working on a home and infusing creativity into our living spaces is one of the main ways I think we can invite more creativity and joy into our lives. By making our homes a creative playground, we can let our brains explore even more creativity, or even unlock creative ways of being we’ve maybe buried over the years of adulthood responsibilities. When we say, “it’s just paint!” and paint a wall in our homes, we give ourselves freedom to be creative and less inhibited in other ways too.

So, what should you expect here? Probably less DIY-home-reno-specific-content, but only because there will be more on other creative subjects. I’m working on launching a new podcast focused on infusing life with more joy through a practice of creativity— interviewing creative humans in a broad variety of artistic and creative industries about their own practices and disciplines that have added joy and fulfillment to their lives. I also want to focus on creating more resources that support you in creating a more creative and joyful life— maybe art journals, books, downloadable worksheets, etc. And in the midst of it all, also creating an environment for myself to practice what I preach and invest in my own creative practice. Submitting my artwork to galleries and my writing to journals, applying for artist grants, and being more active in my local art and writing community.

So that’s the download! Nearly 9 months in the making, it’s taken about that long to distill my thoughts on all of this and come to a place that feels in alignment for me in terms of my online “platform” if you will. I know some folks were just here for the DIY stuff, and if that’s you and none of this sounds interesting, no hard feelings if you choose to peace out. A large majority of my audience discovered me during my DIY years. But in 15 years of blogging and social media presence I’ve pivoted a few times, so people coming and going as my content serves them or not feels very much an expected part of the territory. You do you, boo!

But if you’ve been feeling that pull towards creativity as a practice seeking joy, you might want to stick around!

Favorite Books of 2023

I’ve already done a couple posts throughout the year doing a roundup of my reads but now that 2023 is a wrap, I wanted to share my overall favorite books from the past year. I spent quite a bit of the summer re-reading one of my all time favorite scifi/fantasy series’ but for this list I’m going to focus on more current release books, and a couple new-to-me but older releases.

Fiction

Divine Rivals

This was a really fun read that is set in a fantasy world with some element of magic but ultimately the vibe of the setting is more early 1900’s, which I think is a cool time period to do fantasy within. Tons of fantasy novels tend to exist in the medieval-ish realm, which is enjoyable, but the change in venue and the way the magic elements were incorporated felt new and interesting. The love story is really sweet and it does end on a bit of a cliffhanger (not too painful), but no worries because the second book just came out last month! Ruthless Vows is the second book and I’ve downloaded it but haven’t started it quite yet!

Seven Days in June

This book wasn’t on any TBR list of mine, but it breezed into the free little library we have at our house mid-summer and I had just finished a book and it looked like an fun read so I snagged it. I don’t tend to read a lot of fiction set in contemporary times with the exception of my favorite crime novel series, and I definitely haven’t read any romance type books set in a current urban setting, so it was a departure from my normal reads, but I thoroughly enjoyed it! I loved the characters, the love story was interesting and sweet, with plenty of interest and a little bit of spice, and it had a very satisfying ending.

Destroyer (and Sanctifier)

This one is special to me because it’s by my friend Meg! Destroyer is her debut novel and it’s a duology, so the second book is coming out this spring! I, however, got to read an ARC of book two, Sanctifier, and it was just as wonderful as Destroyer, and tied up the story wonderfully. This is another fantasy novel, with a sort of 1800’s vibe, and while it included magical elements, the main character is an archeologist, so it has a cool mixture of science, magical skepticism, and lots of intrigue. Meg also has another fantasy novel coming out early 2024, a standalone novel titled The Frost Queen

Fourth Wing + Iron Flame

Probably unsurprising that these books are on the list since they’ve topped charts all year long, but after blazing through the Sarah J Maas universe (ACOTAR, Throne of Glass, and Crescent City), it felt somewhat difficult to dive into a new fantasy series that I fell in love with as much as I’d loved those books. I read Fourth Wing shortly after it came out and started getting glowing reviews, and fell for it just as much as the rest of the world (it seemed). Sweeping fantasy world, epic storyline, compelling characters, and some steamy spice made these two books potentially my favorites from this past year. I’m only halfway through Iron Flame thus far so no spoilers please! But even having not finished it yet, I feel confident in putting it on this list as well. If you loved the Sarah J Mass books, this series is a no brainer.

After That Night

The long awaited next book in the Will Trent series! I was introduced to Karin Slaughter many years ago with one of her standalone novels, but quickly fell into her Grant County/Will Trent series. Karin’s mystery/detective writing is absolutely brilliant and her attention to detail is so incredibly thorough, it really makes her books feel immersive and compelling. The pacing of her novels always feels quick and snappy, but in a way that allows you to fully absorb the story. I’m always impressed with how she brings a new and intriguing mystery to each of the installments in this series. The books never feel repetitive, despite the characters remaining largely the same. If you’re looking for a crime series with lots of books to devour, the Grant County/Will Trent Series’ are great.

Non Fiction

What Kind of Woman

I suppose poetry falls under the Non-Fiction umbrella? Either way, I’ve been following Kate J Baer on instagram for many years, and have even bought this book of poems as a gift for a friend, but never had my own copy. Well, I decided to treat myself to it while I was picking up Christmas presents at the local bookshop last month and it’s just such a wonderful collection of poem that speak to life experience as a women. Obviously they’re poems from her life perspective, and include details about her own life, but her writing feels so deeply universal. Her poetry feels relatable, conversational, raw, and approachable. It’s not pretentious in the slightest, or something you feel like you need a degree in english literature to comprehend. Just lovely, real life poetry.

The Confidence Code

I grabbed this book to read on the plane as it headed to a content creator retreat earlier in the year, and it was a surprisingly eye opening book that dug into the science of confidence, how women experience it differently (often less) than men, and how women can tap into confidence in a way that feels authentic to their lived experiences rather than as a replication of how toxic masculinity presents it. I deeply appreciated the science and studies behind the stories and recommendations the authors shared, which I think made the book feel less fluffy-self-help-y, and more prescriptive. It definitely helped me reframe some things surrounding my own experience with confidence

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine

As the events of October 7th sparked debate globally surrounding Palestine, I wanted to fill in some gaps in my regional history, and this book in particular is recommended universally, so I immediately picked it up. It’s a mixture of history dating back to the late 1800’s, and the author’s own experience as a Palestinian with the impacts of the Israeli occupation on his own family. I highly recommend if you’re interested in learning more about the history surrounding the current occupation and Palestinian resistance effort.

Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

This is another book that’s on most lists for folks looking to gain more context on the current occupation of Palestine. This one offers some interesting insight into why liberals and progressives often will leave Palestine out of their efforts towards equality and liberation. It unpacks a lot of the zionist arguments surrounding Palestine, and I think it’s a really solid book for anyone with lingering questions about Palestinian resistance and liberation efforts or anti-semitism as it relates to the arguments against zionism.