Getting on Board with Vision Boards

To help keep me on track on my "one little word" project, I signed up for Ali Edwards' class. Each month she gives a "creative prompt to help you make your word more visible in your life". This month the prompt was making a vision board. This was a pretty new concept to me and when I found out it was related to the so-called "Law of Attraction", I wasn't that enthusiastic about making one. But, seeing as my word is DO, I put my doubts and misgivings aside and decided to give it a go.

Ali included a very helpful video in the class about the process she used to make her board. First, grab some magazines that you can cut up. I used what I had on hand (Taste, Photoshop User and Education Aotearoa). They were all old and heading for the paper recycle bin so it felt good to use them for something. Next, flip through the magazines and cut out any images or words that appeal to you. This is the "brainstorm" part of the process.

I put my cuttings in a plastic bin as I knew that I was not going to make my board until the next day (I wanted to separate the "idea generation" process from the "making" process).

Ali used a canvas for her vision board but I didn't want to buy anything so I re-purposed a piece of corrugated cardboard from a box. When I started sorting through my clippings, I realised that I would need to have at least some kind of structure to work from. So I decided to grab the images first to use them as a base for my finished board. I arranged them first without gluing and when I had something I was happy with, I stuck them down. I was fortunate to find a large image (Make Some Thing) that I think works well as an anchor for the rest of the board (and relates to my word).

Finally, I sorted through the words, selecting those that "spoke" to me or that worked with my word. Again, I arranged them on my board and shifted things around until I was happy with the way it looked. I am reasonably happy with the final product (but happier just to have gone through the process).

It would be an interesting (and relatively cheap) process to do with kids. It would be a great way to spark discussion on design principles like grouping, use of colour, size of elements, use of lines (straight and curved), symbols, fonts etc and how they used them (or decided not to) in their work.

One Little Word

One of the things I love about Twitter is how sometimes it throws up something that really resonates with where I am at the moment. The other day it was Stephanie's post about her #blogaday challenge. Today, it was a link to this post by Lisa Dabbs about the One Little Word challenge.  I thought that this sounded familiar. Sure enough, Lisa linked through to Ali Edwards' site.  I knew Ali from my scrapbooking days. I own several of her books and even met her when she came to NZ in 2006.

I remember when she started her One Little Word challenge. It didn't grab me then. Just the pressure of choosing a word to live with throughout the year seemed too much. So I forgot about it and got on with things. Fast forward to 2015 and a few life changes. I suddenly realised when I saw Lisa'a post that this was what I wanted as a focus for the year. Not a bunch of random resolutions that I would probably forget about in a month or two. Rather a word I could hang reflections on and that would (hopefully) spur me to do what I needed to do.

And there it was. The word. DO. Somehow, it just felt right. It is a very small word but I think a good one to go forward with in 2015.