Zines 101

Create ZINES: self-made short books full of passion and free of red tape. Learn how to plan, produce, print, bind, and distribute mixed media zines. Whether you’re new to zines or looking for community support to make a zine come true, this course is for you.
Materials are provided. Bring additional materials if you’d like, such as a notebook for planning! If you cannot make all four sessions, you are welcome to drop in for one (or more).

Session Titles:

1. Making Mini-Zines

2. Planning & Collage
3. Linocut Prints

4. Copying, Binding, & Sharing Zines


1. In session one, we will learn how to make, fold, and copy mixed media mini-zines using only one piece of paper. With a library of zine inspiration, we will explore the limitless world of zines and demystify various processes and techniques.

2. Ready to dive into a cornucopia of collage and mixed media materials? In session two, we will begin planning, designing, and creating personal zines. Bring an idea for your project or come ready to enjoy the free flow of art-making! We will learn how to make zines the traditional analog way, no ipad or computer program needed.

3. In session three, we will create unique covers for our zines using simple linocut methods. Learn basic relief printing techniques to give your zine project a bold (or otherwise specific) look. Come with a title and design idea or create one with class support.

4. In the final session, we will make our zines come to life. Arrive with the contents of your zine complete. We will scan, print, and staple or bind our little books. Learn basic book binding methods and share your final zine with a group of passionate creatives. We will discuss methods for distribution and everyone will leave with zines, including a zine about DIY zine-making (created by froggie!)

Ages 10+

Froggie Scream

Froggie (they/them) is a trans nonbinary activist and interdisciplinary artist based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Their art celebrates queer transformation in the imaginative (re)making of a peaceful world. Froggie wears many colorful hats… as a community arts organizer for socio-environmental justice, an alternative tattoo artist, painter, creative writer, art teacher, student of herbalism, and zinester.

Froggie organizes a snail mail club for subscribers of their monthly mixed media zine publication, the Magik Awakening. Froggie loves making and sharing zines (DIY booklets and ephemera), whether it’s poetry chapbooks, community compilations, or experimental mini-zines on connected topics of nature, queerness, and spirit.

Froggie explores the intersections of art and nature through lived experience and mediums different than, but often useful for, zines. Froggie enjoys making and sharing abstract “trash art” paintings with found objects, reused supplies, photo collage, language, and collected natural materials. Their colorful, textured work opens portals to spiritual remembering and cosmological visioning.

Art-making is an underratedly powerful and accessible tool for healing. Froggie lives this truth on personal and community levels. Their identities and passions push them to prioritize diversity and cultivate resilience through grassroots rituals of self love, creative collaboration, and reeemergence into the higher reality of which we belong.

What do they do for (art)work? Froggie tattoos at a licensed co-op studio called Art Lab. They also teach art classes in public elementary schools and host intentional cultural arts programming for all ages. They organize with the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition as well as through their own platforms of Art Lab and PermaBuds. In 2020, Froggie launched PermaBuds, a creative collective originally mobilized by the ideas of permaculture, indigenous land practices, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Successful strategies of the passion project have included a free composting system, art-clothing-plant swap events, free ecological education workshops, eco-art skill shares, and compilation zines.

Community gathering and art-making are core to Froggie’s commitments as an artist-activist. Froggie works to co-create inclusive spaces of enriching connection. Creative participation is key to rekindling reciprocity and abundance with the natural ecosystems we belong to. Practices of deep listening, moving and breathing through space, and intuitive drawing and writing are all transformative actions we can make on our path toward a peaceful future.

Froggie graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 2023 with a Bachelor’s in Urban Planning and a Certificate in Environmental Literacy.

Find Froggie and their art online: https://linktr.ee/Froggiescream

Email for inquiries and to join their mailing list: [email protected]

LEARN MORE

With Fair Share Pricing, CCAC is eliminating the need for scholarship applications so that everyone has access to the arts and can express themselves. If you are unable to pay the full tuition amount, simply choose one of the provided scholarship levels. If you are in a position to pay more, we encourage you to select the Supporter Level or to make a donation upon checkout. You can find guidance HERE on which tuition level we suggest, but the decision is up to you — we will never ask for additional verification or paperwork

Support for the Fair Shair Pricing program comes from the Gerald H. Fitzgerald Scholarship Fund and contributors like you.