As holiday cards began to roll in, Michele, my wife, and I discussed whether we were going to do a Christmas card ourselves. After being married 30+ years with our kids grown and out of the house, our life doesn’t lead to photos of far-flung travel and excitement.
Recently, our neighbor Emily put out a zine featuring my 20 years of Halloween costume data. I was honored and thrilled to see an actual paper zine. For those that don’t know, a zine is a small self-published booklet often made by hand.
When I saw it, I had thoughts about what I would put into a zine.
We considered various card concepts until the idea clicked: make our own zine. Not a holiday themed one, but just filled with work and ideas from both of us.
I found a great template on Sinoun Chea’s site. We went with an eight page zine template.
We started filling up the pages with small bits we thought might be interesting to the people on our Christmas card list. Some images of Michele’s work, several best of 2025 lists, a short essay about buying a smart TV, and a few things we had no idea if others would find interesting.
Once we finalized the content and design, I looked into printing. A few pages have color images and I found out quickly that color printing is still pretty expensive at local print shops. At over $2 in printing costs per issue, the total was adding up quickly to a big number. We decided to double down and buy our own color laser printer, as we’d probably be making zines again, not just for the holidays.
I felt very DIY as I folded and stapled the issues together. The physical work of putting a zine together is far more rewarding than uploading images to a print company on the internet. Michele helped with the card list and labels. We got a lot of feedback from friends and family and they loved it. One couple told us they’re going to make one themselves.
If you’d like a copy, you can print it from this PDF.
When printing, choose two-sided printing and flip on the short edge.
We had a blast making a zine. If you have some spare time, you might consider making one yourself.
Going analog in a digital world is refreshing.
