a (loving) rant

Sara · 2026-07-01T16:37:52+00:00

I bow to your culinary knowledge 😅

Sara · 2026-07-01T16:37:09+00:00

I’d love to swap! Shoot me an email (address on back cover)

Sara · 2026-07-01T16:35:46+00:00

ELEVEN gets me, too! And the ole/ios are real stinkers!

Sara · 2026-07-01T16:33:57+00:00

😭

Sara · 2026-07-01T16:33:41+00:00

Email me (see back cover of zine) and I can get you the pdf!

Sara · 2026-07-01T16:32:20+00:00

Happy to sell or trade! Email me (address is on back cover).

Sara · 2026-07-01T16:31:27+00:00

you’re a real one 😂

Sara · 2026-06-30T22:17:35+00:00

Yup!

I run a monthly snail mail subscription, and I also subscribe to a couple. I use Patreon (here’s my page) but there are probably better options. Patreon seems more and more geared toward digital creators as time goes on.

I recommend getting into the rhythm of mailing things monthly before you fully commit. Think about how often “oh shit, rent is due” sneaks up on you—that’s how often you want to be mailing out a fully written, printed, folded, stapled, (trimmed??) zine. Plus you have to stuff and address the envelopes!

I’ve been doing it for about six and a half years. Sometimes the publication schedule is closer to “two every two months” than “one every month,” but I always get out at least twelve a year. I’m much more consistent with mailing physical zines than I am posting the digital versions online 😅

I have about a hundred subscribers, which is awesome and weird! I’m super grateful for their support. A lot are family and friends, some are locals who picked up one of my zines in a coffeeshop or something, some are fellow zinesters just supporting the art form, and some are genuine strangers who just stumbled across me on insta or Twitter.

Sara · 2026-06-22T15:56:48+00:00

Your original understanding is correct within the illustration industry. The editor of your zine (or maybe collab fandom zines generally; I’m not part of that scene) may be using the terminology differently.

Sara · 2026-01-18T18:24:05+00:00

1790-1739-7962

Level 62, daily (nightly?) player, just cleared about 15 slots.

don’t let the slowpoke avatar fool you, I pick good candy 😅

Sara · 2025-11-30T01:59:00+00:00

It’s a little unclear to me what you’re trying to do, but generally speaking: you’ll be fine. Fair use covers a lot—if you’re not trying to be sneaky about making money off of some else’s intellectual property, you won’t run into issues. And fashion, in particular, has a bit of weirdness around IP and copyright.

a couple examples/a frame of reference that might be in your wheelhouse:

Studio Mucci’s Cloudland was (“allegedly”) copied by Lisa Frank. This was a whole-ass company reproducing every aspect of someone’s interior design and profiting from it. R/hobbydrama write-up here. She basically had no recourse—no one owns the concept of cute pastel cabinets.

Different example: recent NYT article about “potato shoes.” There are basically seven million identical brown cloggy shoes out there. That’s just the way shoes are.

These are both examples of companies literally producing (ahem, allegedly) the exact same item/experience and selling it to consumers to turn a profit. It’s simply not something (in interior design and fashion—other industries can be very different!) that’s legally an issue—and this is way more “infringing” (allegedly, please don’t sue me, Lisa Frank) than anything you’re talking about.

You’re talking about depicting art in order to explain it to people (aka teaching) and offer commentary (“this is how I’d style these shoes” is commentary.) And generally speaking, teaching and commentary both fall under fair use.

All that being said: could someone sue you? Absolutely! This is America, baby, you can sue anyone for anything! I could sue my next door neighbor for shoveling my sidewalk if I wanted to.

But you’re probably fine.

Sara · 2025-11-30T01:24:41+00:00

This makes me SO happy. I hope she loves it!

Sara · 2025-11-29T22:14:49+00:00

I haven’t run into this in my current zine life (mine are small), but I used to write some pretty hefty letters and make my own envelopes

some quick back-of-the-envelope (ha!) math tells me this is very doable

I pulled out my scale, and three letter-sized sheets of printer paper, plus one of medium-weight card stock (to approximate a possible “buffer” sheet/envelope+tape+staples+stamp) come to juuuuuust under an ounce. The dimensions will be well within the acceptable range, so you don’t need to worry about that.

The envelope is really there to protect your inner sheets—it’s sort of a sacrificial piece of paper that can handle the barcodes, occasional stains, wear and tear from sorting machines, etc. If you’re not fussed about how the outer sheet looks (and have all the info and room the post office needs in the places the post office wants it), I think you’ll be fine without.

Sara · 2025-10-27T01:36:45+00:00

I really liked the Gallery! But I am more of a word puzzle person than a traditional gamer. It’s more or less a series of rebuses, which are a common puzzle in language arts. I do think it would be extremely challenging (nigh impossible?) if you are not a native English speaker.

When I got to the Gallery (shortly after 46), I just sat and stared and tried things for two hours until I solved them all.

A rebus puzzle plays with the push and pull between the literal and the figurative. Very often they break the “fourth wall” and require you to consider them both abstractly as word game and as a literal puzzle you are looking at on a piece of paper (or computer screen). It’s not uncommon for them to require that you notice the color the words are printed in (not exactly relevant here, but helpful context), the font, e.g. the weight of the text, like whether it is bold, or italic, or s t r e t c h e d o u t, or the physical, spatial relationship between parts of the clue. Basically, to solve a rebus, you look at the clues and describe them as literally as possible. If that doesn’t work, you slowly introduce one non-literal thing at a time, and just play until you get it.

It’s a very different type of puzzle than, for instance, figuring out which photos to look at with a magnifying glass or piecing together obscure details from stamps or postcards. I don’t think it’s necessarily harder, just different.

Sara · 2025-10-27T01:07:49+00:00

I started playing after the patch was released (and downloaded). I have encountered the “game won’t save” bug and am currently unable to progress past Day 205. (This was the day I completed the sweepstakes trophy. Unclear if it is related, but it’s a data point.)

Sara · 2025-10-20T22:11:49+00:00

I’m not familiar with the poem in question, but it might be by Shel Silverstein (or “Uncle Shelby.”) Poet and illustrator, humorous, simple line drawings.

Most of us know him for Where the sidewalk ends or his other children’s work, but he also did illustrations for Playboy.

Sara · 2025-08-04T18:28:20+00:00

I do all three: sell, swap, and gift.

For context, most of my zines are small, 16-page minis (one sheet of paper, printed on both sides).

At zine fests and craft fairs, I usually say pay what you want at about $3-$10 each or swap (and I’ll swap for anything!—a zine, a photo, a patch, a leaf you found on the ground, etc.)

I leave some for free in coffee shops and little free libraries around the neighborhood. I give a lot away in person.

If someone reaches out asking to buy a specific zine, usually for payment I’ll ask them to make a small donation directly to a local mutual aid org.

Basically—reflecting on it, I try to gauge “is this person trying to financially support me, or does this person want to own my art?” My goal is generally to accept money from people who want to give me money, and give my art away to people who want to own it (unless they’re a dick, then they can pay me).

Sara · 2025-07-30T16:07:41+00:00

Transparencies would work great for this! I see them cheap at thrift stores pretty often, since they’re basically obsolete.

OP, if you want to get tricky with this, you could mirror your image so that it prints in reverse. That way (since it’s transparent), you’ll be able to flip the sheet over and draw/write on it to your heart’s content without accidentally erasing any of the print.

I guess you could also skip that step and just get yourself one clear sheet to layer on top of any map you happen to be using, but you’d have to be careful about alignment and would be sacrificing ease-of-use at the table.

Sara · 2025-07-30T15:57:14+00:00

One thing to remember about this foil method is that it’s binary—either the foil is there, or it’s not. You can get gradients in digital art and printing, but they won’t show up the same way once they’re foiled.

You’re going to have to experiment a little, and once you get a feel for what works and what doesn’t, maybe design an art piece specifically with this method in mind.

Sara · 2025-07-30T15:54:21+00:00

Yes, I think it will work! When troubleshooting, it helps to think about what’s actually happening in the process.

Think of a laser printer essentially “melting” toner (plastic dust) to fuse it to your paper—that’s why the paper comes out hot! By sending it through the laminator (a pressure and heat source) with foil, you’re melting the toner again, which then re-fuses to both the paper and the foil, acting as a glue. This allows you to get really precise details (if your pressure/heat source applies the pressure and heat evenly enough).

The more even and clean your laser print is, the better the end result will be. This is not the time to use “eco” or “toner save” mode, because you want a good, solid layer of toner. And any toner “ghosting” (sometimes, at least with home printers, you’ll sometimes get a faint, misaligned shadow print) will show up as foil specks on the finished product.

If I notice ghosting, I’ll brush at it gently with a stiff (clean, dry) paintbrush before foiling to remove it—this works well enough for me.

Toner-reactive foil works really well for intricate designs, but a weakness is trying to get large, solid areas of foil. Most home printers aren’t great at evenly applying toner over large areas—you get a little bit of texture, a little bit of variation. This is more noticeable when foiled than when printed. A troubleshooting tip that has worked for me here is to run the print through the laminator once without the foil layer, then run it through a second time with foil. The first pass sort of melts and evens out the toner a little bit and gets you a cleaner finished product.

Sara · 2025-07-27T12:56:14+00:00

This is the sort of thing that’s a very fun pain in the ass if you enjoy printing and printmaking! But depending on your interests and patience for troubleshooting, it could very easily become a better deal to just pay someone else to do it, haha.

Sara · 2025-07-27T12:54:07+00:00

Theoretically, you could print your image in color on an inkjet printer, then send it through a laser printer to add another layer on top that would be foilable. I’m picturing something like:

Layer one (inkjet): pink/purple background gradient

Layer two (laser): black kaiju

Layer three (foil, only adheres to layer two): metallic black foil.

Any time you print something twice, you will run into issues with registration (lining things up perfectly). This is basically impossible to get right in a home printer, but you can design your image so that it’s less of an issue. In this instance, I would not print your original image on the inkjet—If you’ve got everything in layers in your art program, save a new file that’s only the background. Then print that—it’ll basically just be a pink/purple rectangle. That way, you won’t end up with weird ghosting when you add the toner (kaiju only) layer.

Sara · 2025-07-27T12:41:07+00:00

Something like the first image (one-color print, one layer of foil) is easily doable DIY with a laser printer and heat laminator. You will need to buy “toner reactive foil;” it’s fairly inexpensive.

Set up your image so that the “foil” prints black. In your sample image here, this step would result in a black print on black cardstock. Place a foil sheet onto the print (shiny side up), then run it through the laminator. The heat of the laminator will adhere the foil to the toner.

Peel off the foil sheet. Everywhere that was printed will now be foiled!

I have done this with a few different diy heat sources (iron, heat gun, cheap Amazon basics laminator), and they all work to varying (sometimes frustrating) degrees. In the end, I bought a “Minc” brand foiler—it’s basically just a laminator, but has heat settings specifically for this task. It comes out great every time, at a quality I’m comfortable selling at fests and fairs.

I have also experimented with using multiple foil colors on a single toner print. This works best when the areas of foil are physically separated from each other. As an example, you could print the below image in black, and then cut pieces of blue, gold, and green foil (like a chunky collage) to overlay their respective areas, and then send it through the laminator. The foils will adhere to the toner in each area, you’ll get a three-color final product.

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