Looking for a way to record all of your camp memories in one handy place? Want to have a pocket-size piece of camp joy to keep? Have we got the activity for you! Nurse Buffalo and Director Jo have teamed up to bring zines to YOU! Here is your DIY camp zine, all ready for you to print and customize!

What is a zine, you say?

A zine is a pocket size, homemade, and easily reproduced fan magazine! They’ve been around for nearly 100 years, and were one of the first ways people were able to connect over fandoms. They have united sci-fi, music, and other fandoms for decades through their easily mailable and shareable size, low cost, and relatively small distribution. You can learn more about zines here!

Functionally, a zine is a folded sheet (or two) of paper, cut into pages to create a pocket-size book. Sometimes it is stapled to keep the pages together, but it depends on the type of zine you are making. The pages are often hand drawn or pasted together from other pieces, and then photocopied for sharing.

You can make your own zine!

For camp this year, we’re bringing you an awesome zine to print and complete at home! This is a custom keepsake with plenty of space to remember this year’s IGGPPCamp experience! We’ve even got a sheet of “stickers” for you to color (or not!) and cut and paste into the zine for added personalization. Woo hoo!

How to fold a zine:

A quick tip for those of you who have a printer that does not print double sided. You can do a quick test to figure out how to manually feed paper into your printer so that it prints the way you want: take a blank piece of paper and write “front/top” at the top edge of it. Then, do a test print of page 1. Pay attention to where your “front/top” note ends up after the page prints out. This will help you understand how to insert the sheet so that page 2 prints out correctly on the back of page 1.

1. This zine has been designed to fit entirely on the front and back of one sheet of paper. Begin with page one facing up, such that the cover of the zine is at the bottom right corner of the paper.

2. If you pick up the zine by this corner and flip the page to the left, this is how page two should look, with the “camp persona” quadrant in the bottom left of the paper.

3. Another way to think of this – “camp persona” should be printed on the back of the zine front cover.

4. Now that you have verified that the front and back pages have printed out properly aligned, leave page two facing up and fold it in half hamburger style.

(i.e., bring the top corners down to meet the bottom corners and crease in the middle.)

5. Make sure to fold along that crease all nice and crisp. Your result will look like so!

6. One more fold. This time, you’ll fold from left to right like a book.

You should end up with the front of the zine on top!

7. There should be a folded edge along the top edge of your zine. (The other fold makes the “spine” of the zine, on the left side.) Take a pair of scissors and cut open the top fold only.

8. Ta-da! All the pages of your zine are free!

From here, you can either leave it as is, or do a single staple along the spine of the zine, or if you want to be really fancy, you could hand bind it. But leaving it “loose leaf” without attaching all the pages together is perfectly fine as well.

Some printers will force a border along the edges of your zine, even if you tell your printer to fit the PDF to the page. If this happens to you, this is a great excuse to jazz your zine up with your favorite washi tape.

One of the best parts of a zine is when you get to CUSTOMIZE! Bust out your favorite markers, glue, washi tape, and stickers, and start fancying up your zine how you like. We provided a page of extras above for you to inspire you on what kind of other art or phrases you can add to your zine. Cut out your favorite bits and paste them where you want!

Now that you’ve made your zine, let’s see them! Tag us on social media with #IGGPPCamp or share in Nurse Buffalo’s cabin in the IGGPPCamp discord!