By Diane Gilleland

Zines (short for "fanzines" or "magazines") are self-published booklets about any subject that grabs you. (Seriously, you can find a zine about just about anything.) There's a rich zine culture around the world, where music fans, writers, comic book artists, citizen journalists, poets, and others of every stripe are making, trading, and selling their creations.

Zine-making is also a fantastic activity for kids. Not only are zines a fun means of creative expression, making them gives kids a little insight into how published books and magazines are made, and may help them think more critically about what goes into those mainstream publications.

Here are some fun ways to create zine-making experiences for kids of all ages.

Flickr user, sarahxsea, created this awesome cross-stitch for some friends as a thank you/housewarming gift.

They gave me an awesome Lego set of an RV when I moved into my apartment last year, so I thought I would return the favor!

Sean @ Make: Online makes some astute observations about these rad tattooed Lego minifigs:

This is a viral marketing campaign for some kind of extra-fine point Pilot pen. I love the minifigs themselves, but the campaign bugs me for a couple of reasons: 1) I've been Googling around pretty hard and can't seem to figure out exactly which of Pilot's many pens these photos are promoting, and 2) nowhere does it explicitly state that the art on the minifigs was actually done with whatever pen they are advertising. So even if I could figure out which one that was, it's not at all clear that I could actually use it to tattoo my own minifigs. In any case, any kind of super-fine-point permanent maker would probably work.

The Instructables beauty contest is over, and the results are in! User creativegirlz has one of the winning entries with this awesome instruction set for learning to apply henna to your hands.

San Francisco artist Alexis Anne Mackenzie aptly calls herself a "paper surgeon." All of her work is done by hand, painstakingly clipped from books and artfully assembled to spell visually enigmatic words or phrases. One can decipher these messages simply by reading the artwork titles, but of course this spoils the fun of trying to see beyond the botanical assemblage.

Technically they are collages, but I've never enjoyed describing them in those terms ... I feel like there is a general concept out there of what collage is and tends to look like, which doesn't apply to what I do at all. My general intent, throughout all my work, is to portray the world as a flawed thing of beauty -- a place that shines brightly, but has a dark side to match.

You can read more at Fecal Face and The Beholder. For more collage(esque) goodness -- and happily there is a lot of it! -- check out her blog, Cocoon Balloon, and her flickr. I hope to meet you one day in SF, Alexis! [via Teagan Tall]

Meg of Elsie Marley shares a tutorial for making a tangram puzzle from balsa wood. I used to love playing with these when I was a kid, and I'm thinking I need to try my hand at it again and introduce my kids to the fun of a tangram puzzle.

Embroidered Digital Commons is a participatory artwork facilitated by Ele Carpenter. You can sign up to embroider a patch of text for display at the AND Festival in Manchester UK this coming October:

The Embroidered Digital Commons is a collectively stitched version of the Raqs Media Collective's text 'A Concise lexicon of / for the Digital Commons' 2003, facilitated by Ele Carpenter. The term 'Zone' is being facilitated by ArtYarn and Madlab for the 'Analogue is the New Digital' exhibition curated by Simon Blackmore and Andrea Zapp, part of the AND Festival, Manchester October 2010.

If you would like to embroider a patch or co-ordinate a group to embroider a whole term, please get in touch through the open source embroidery google group.

This summer, CRAFT has reinstated our popular Summer Camp series, and we've continued to share some very fun projects. We thought we'd take a look back at some of our favorite Summer Camp CRAFT projects from last year in case you're itchin' for even more things to do this summer with your kids.

These chocolate banana pops from Katie Goodman are making my mouth water. Not only would the kids love to eat them, making them would be a great summer activity as well.

Becky shows you how to make a pinhole camera in this CRAFT video. It would be a great weekend project for the family and a unique way to capture some summer photographic memories.

This scooter bag from Kathie Sever and Bernadette Noll is a fun project to work on together, and is highly functional.

Tweens and teens will have fun putting together these candy box purses.

These are just a few of the fun projects that were featured in last summer's Summer CRAFT Camp. Be sure to check out the entire archive for loads more summer craft fun!

MAKE and CRAFT author Andrew Lewis writes:

We're all working on some pretty cool projects over here at the moment, but this Arduino powered sewing machine is my personal favourite. I took an old zigzag sewing machine and kitted it out with servos to control the needle position and fabric feed.

CNC sewing machine

Sunset has more than 30 DIY fountain projects up on their site. I love fountains, and with some clever material sourcing, they can be quite easy to put together. When I lived in a bustling town with tons of traffic, my fountain was kept outside under my bedroom window so I could fall asleep to the beautiful music of trickling water.