I finally created a Useful Links list that will be sent out to new subscribers of the Make Great Stuff newsletter.

Since you all signed up for my newsletter (or blog for that matter) before I had my act together to make this list, I thought I’d share it here as well in case you find it beneficial.

Scan through the categories I’ve created below, see what catches your eye, and start there.

The Free Trial

By signing up for the Make Great Stuff Newsletter, you were automatically issued a FREE coupon for the Creative Breakthroughs Collage Tele-Class. If you didn’t see it come into your email, please check your junk or spam folder. Then sign up for a class and we’ll send you reminders beforehand so you don’t forget.

It’s cheap, easy, and most of all, FUN & FULFILLING! You can’t beat it with a stick.

• Learn More & Read Some Powerful Testimonials About the Class Here:

  http://makegreatstuff.com/classes/

• Structured Support & Why We All Need It:

  http://makegreatstuff.com/yoga-for-your-creativity/

Getting Unstuck

If you’ve been feeling stuck, it can be excruciating to start again. You think about it all the time, but you just can’t turn thoughts into action. The momentum of not-doing can have a stranglehold, but I’ve got some great, safe ideas for helping yourself work through the ick and start creating again.

• Why it Doesn’t Help to Wait until You’re Inspired:

  http://makegreatstuff.com/is-inspiration-like-a-butterfly/

• Re-Claiming Your Free Time:

  http://makegreatstuff.com/breathing-room/

• Why You Shouldn’t Wait to be “In the Mood” to Create:

  http://makegreatstuff.com/in-the-mood-or-not/

• The Dangers of Waiting to Be “Ready”:

  http://makegreatstuff.com/are-you-waiting-to-be-ready/

• Why Resistance is so Seductive and How to Avoid Getting Ensnared:

  http://makegreatstuff.com/resisting-resistance/

The Fine Art of Finishing

Perhaps you love to make and dabble and try new things, but nothing ever seems to get done. Well, there’s a reason for that, and these posts explore those challenges, explain what’s hard, and help you take that final step and finish what you start. Very empowering:

• It’s Not Crappy, You’re Just in the Middle:

  http://makegreatstuff.com/horseshoes-and-hand-grenades/

• What To Do After the Honeymoon is Over:

  http://makegreatstuff.com/the-tricky-art-of-finishing-what-you-start/

• The Difference Between Almost Finished and Finished:

  http://makegreatstuff.com/90-ville/

• The Real Reason You Stop Before You’re Finished:

  http://makegreatstuff.com/90-ville-part-2/

The 20 Minute Technique

I promise if  you use this technique regularly, you will be more productive, feel in charge of your creativity, and start making work you love.

I used to have it as a feature of my blog, but soon it’s going to be an E-Course to help you jump-start your creativity. In the meantime though, here’s an overview of how it works and some real life examples of how I use it all the time to keep myself creating:

• What the Heck the 20 Minute Technique is and How it Works:

  http://makegreatstuff.com/getting-jump-started/

• A List of What You Can do in Your 20 Minutes: (halfway down the article)

  http://makegreatstuff.com/did-you-get-a-timer-yet/

• Ernest Hemingway’s Technique:

  http://makegreatstuff.com/ernest-hemingways-productivity-technique/

• Making Your Creativity Your Sanctuary in an Overwhelming World:

  http://makegreatstuff.com/is-your-art-your-sanctuary/

• Real Life Example:

  http://makegreatstuff.com/it-really-does-work/

Honoring Yourself and Your Progress

It’s easy to discount what you do or to feel silly about asserting its importance. However, part of the process of reclaiming your life as an artist is to honor yourself and own what you do. These posts are about that:

• Why You Should Frame Your Work:

  http://makegreatstuff.com/ive-been-framed/

• Nourishing Your Creative Heart:

  http://makegreatstuff.com/the-goldilocks-technique/

• Appreciating Yourself and Why You Need to Do it!

  http://makegreatstuff.com/appreciation/

• The Path to Measuring Up to Your Own High Standards:

  http://makegreatstuff.com/when-your-work-doesnt-match-your-vision/

• Creativity is Not Shopping: The Danger of Being a Technique Hummingbird:
  http://makegreatstuff.com/making-friends-with-the-unknown/

Practical Techniques and Strategies that Anyone Can Use

• Creating an Annual Theme:

  http://makegreatstuff.com/whats-your-theme/

• Going Public (with your Family at least)

  http://makegreatstuff.com/not-coming-in-dead-last/

• Learning to Transition Well: Why it’s Important to your Creativity:

  http://makegreatstuff.com/you-cant-get-there-from-here/

• The Benefits of “Mixing it Up:”

  http://makegreatstuff.com/5-ways-to-mix-it-up/

• Keep Yourself Going with a Personal Metaphor:

  http://makegreatstuff.com/whats-your-metaphor/

Your Turn

What do you think? What articles were most helpful–and why?  Do you have a busy, creative friend who might benefit from reading some of the articles on this list as well? If so, please forward and spread the creative love!

xo -Sarah

This week I want to talk about another common avoidance based technique obsession–the always-acquiring, never-doing life of Technique Flitting.

Part 2: The Technique Hummingbird

If you’re anything like me, you love learning and experiencing new things. If you’re also like me, your eagerness to lap up all kinds of exciting art, design, or craft techniques can leave you constantly putting yourself in learning and accumulation mode–never exploring anything you learn deeply or with much integrity because you’re on to the next thing before the latest one has had time to sink in.

It’s kind of like reducing your passion for creativity to a technique shopping experience.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy shopping and love me a flea market–but creating isn’t shopping.

Creativity has a deeper role to play in your life than shopping, and if all you do hunt down cool bargains, buy them, and then go look for more stuff, it ends up minimizing your gift, your passion, and the role that art and creativity plays in a human life as a vehicle for transcendence, understanding, and true expression.

All critical pieces of a life well-lived.

And, just as the obsessive Technique Nazi from last week may hide behind her rules and purism about her craft in order to avoid figuring out what she wants to say, the Technique Hummingbird is masking that same anxiety in an onslaught of newness and temporary stimulation.

So both extremes are expressions of the same fears.

Ambiguity

Part of this reliance on technique to avoid personal expression is because expressing yourself is uncharted water–it’s usually ambiguous, hazy and unclear–and ambiguity is usually uncomfortable.

Plus, it leaves all the decision making up to you because the question is no longer about HOW but about WHY.

And then, even when you DO have an idea, these questions continue throughout the creative process–are these the right marks? Are these stitches expressing what I want? Did I make good choices–am I expressing this idea or that observation about the world?

It’s all questions and very few answers.

Of course, this also feeds another fear: what if you try to head down the road of self-expression and then realize you’ve got nothing to say?

Aaaahhhhhhhhhhhh…………..

What to do…what to do…

Make Friends

The thing is, ambiguity is a fact of nature, and an important part of the creative process.

It is, therefore, your friend.

Rather than dreading ambiguity or feeling discomfort, consider that ambiguity makes room for everyone. There’s always more than one right answer–in fact, it’s not even about right answers.

Ambiguity is possibility—and nothing cheers me up more than possibility. It provides a rich playground to spend lots of time in–a lifetime even.

Ambiguity also implies impermanence–which doesn’t have to mean loss. Impermanence can be a good thing: I’m glad I’m not in the same place I was when I was 16. I also love the adventures I had in my twenties and now treasure the stability of being a happily married home owner in my forties.

Throughout all this time and myriad changes, I’ve created artwork. I’ve been drawn to lots of different materials (due to my own technique hummingbird tendencies) while simultaneously revisiting a handful of materials and techniques over and over. I’m never bored and it’s always an evolution.

Being an artist is living in the ambiguity. And there’s great joy and even solace in ambiguity and possibility.

So right now, if you feel like you don’t have any ideas, or that all your ideas suck, take heart. Not having ideas is a temporary situation.

If you’ve been focused solely on technique for ages or haven’t made anything in a while, it’s natural to draw a blank when you ask yourself “Why” instead of “How.”

Ideas will emerge, I guarantee it.
All you need to do is pay attention to yourself and your life–notice and wonder about it.

For instance, think about what’s happening in your life right now–same old, same old? Maybe you need to create work about boredom or anger–what does that look like? Or maybe it’s same old-same old in a lovely way–so how do you express tranquility and steadiness?

Or maybe you’re drawn to formal issues–shapes, colors, scale, light, etc. Immerse yourself in these things–go on an observation binge and you’ll see you’ve got something personal and unique to say on that topic.

Explore and Allow

Whatever you do, treat your forays into personal expression as an exploration not a test.

Allow yourself the ideas you have–don’t judge them. You don’t even have to understand them. You just have to shush your left brain need to control it all and let your right brain explore them.

Don’t decide they aren’t interesting enough or smart enough. For instance, I’m on some circle obsession with my collaging–going on for months now. Rather than decide that that is banal or silly or shallow, I just observe it and indulge it. Here I am with my circle thing, I think, as I punch out more circles and glue them down. I wonder what this is about?

It’s being on your own side and giving yourself the benefit of the doubt. You don’t have to justify what you’re doing or explain it to anyone–you’re just observing and experimenting.

Start treating your ideas like they matter, and they do.

And the more generous you are with yourself in this way, the more generous others are  about it too–because you own it.

When you start using technique to explore ideas, you’re striking a healthy balance between technique and expression–each informs the other.

It doesn’t mean you’ll get it right all the time, but that’s a given.

Because even though we all love to make great stuff and then stare at it like a star-crossed lover, it’s really all about the ride.

A rich, rewarding, courageous, meaningful, playful, aesthetic ride.

What do you think? Have you been hiding behind technique rules or lots of  learning and no doing? Please share your thoughts in the comments, I’d love to hear from you.

I wanted you to see it because she’s so joyful and so committed to her art form and her process, that it’s very inspiring.

Click on the video below to watch–or, if you don’t see anything, click here to see it on YouTube–it’s worth it. Enjoy!

Are you secretly afraid you can’t beat it? Or that it was just a happy accident?

I mean, you know you made it, but it feels like the exception and not the rule, and maybe you’ve decide that it doesn’t count?

Or you feel like you’ve mysteriously managed to trick Fate and slip one by him as he dozed off on his 24 hour shift at the Dickensian Don’t Get Too Big for Your Britches accounting desk in the sky?

Maybe you’ve even made something you love so much that now it’s paralyzing you from making more work because you think none of it will ever measure up to that piece again.

And if it’s been a while since you’ve made anything and you feel rusty, these worries can bring on a full-blown bout of extreme self-censorship and anxiety about ever trying again.

Listen, you’re not alone. Almost every artist, crafter, writer or designer I know secretly harbors these thoughts or has done at some point in their creative life.

Thing thing is, it’s total garbage. You made it once and you can make it again–or do something better.

Your best work is there to remind you what you’re capable of and the incredible possibilities that lie before you. You’re not a One Hit Wonder, over the hill and past your prime.

No one is.

Even One Hit Wonders. Because their singular “hit” was about the market and has nothing to do with the music.

You have a lifetime of creativity and possibility in front of you. And in that lifetime, sometimes you’re going to make crap–it’s inevitable.

And those of you who push yourselves out of your comfort zone most often will make more crap than the others.

But you will also make more great stuff too.

The great stuff and the…. “wadders” as we say in the sewing world, are like a yin yang inevitability–each is necessary for the other, and together they make your path.

The “wadders” are not mistakes, and the time you took to make them was not wasted. They’re paving stones on your path to better work. The real trick is to enjoy and honor them.

And the more you create, the easier this is to do because…the more you create, the more you own your process.

The more you create, the more you realize you are not your stuff. You are, in fact, a many splendor-ed thing!

The more you create, the more you embrace the evolution of your own artistic journey and the less you care what others think about what you do.

The more you create, the more okay you are with your mistakes, side trips, and risk-taking.

The key is to commit to yourself and your particular creative path regardless of the “success” of the work you make. Why? Because you’re already in it for the long haul–whether you realize it or not.

You could get hit by a bus tomorrow, but you”ll probably live to a ripe old age and you’ll still be drawn to creativity and creating–whether you’re making anything or not–just like you are now.

How are you going to spend those years from now til then?

Are you going to get to the end of your life having protected yourself from bad feelings and occasionally looking silly, or will you include yourself in the creative experience simply because you want to, because you enjoy it, because it makes you feel like yourself, fully connected to being alive?

Will you give yourself challenges? Will you make things you have no idea how they will turn out? Will you immerse yourself and go to your particular edge?

Will you live your life like the artist you are–creating, looking, thinking, noticing, reveling, marveling, appreciating and making-making-making–unwilling to rob yourself of your particular creative experience, your particular creative path?

What will you choose?

Please leave a comment, I’d love to hear from you.

Work you love so much that you’re almost mad the other person made it and not you.

It might be work by a great master or it might be something by your next door neighbor.

Now ask yourself, “Why does it knock my socks off?” What do I love about it so much?

After you’re done saying it’s beautiful or gorgeous, things get a little harder, but really, you’re just getting started.

That, and it can be challenging to find words to express our response to visual art, design, or crafts because really, they’re wordless.

Keep going anyway. Describe the work to yourself. What is it “doing?’ How is it “being?’ What resonates for you? Why do you like this piece so much more than something else?

Ach! It’s not easy is it? It’s tempting to say, “I just like it and that’s enough.”

Sure, but before you quit, consider digging a little deeper for your answers.

Why bother, you ask? Well, because there’s gold in them thar hills, that’s why!

Why it’s Worth It

Neill House with Chimney from the American Folk Art Museum

For instance, I’m partial to a lot of folk art, outsider art and medieval art. One of the things all this work has in common is the flat picture plane–where the artist is unconcerned with creating the illusion of perspective.

My friend doesn’t like that kind of thing at all. And as we were discussing our different tastes, I thought, “Well, why exactly do I love the flat picture plane?”

At first, it felt hard to articulate because, as I mentioned above, the visual, aesthetic response is more like a felt emotion rather than a thought, and words can almost seem inappropriate.

But you can glean a lot of useful information for yourself as an artist/designer/crafter by trying anyway. It helps you understand your own taste and creative priorities more fully.

Sooooo, I continued–why do I like the flat picture plane? Well, I like it because:

• It feels emotional–raw, direct, fragile, genuine, honest.
• I like the constant back and forth that often happens in flat work where the artist straddles offering a narrative and expressing a flat, decorative feeling.
• I like the “thingness” that a flat picture plan brings to a piece–the surface is what it is. Perhaps this is why I like a lot of decorative arts and traditional crafts in general–they are themselves, not a depiction of something else.

Now I’m not saying these proclivities are better or worse than someone else’s–they’re just mine.

But they’re helpful to consciously know–as a creator. It helps you define more clearly in your mind who you are as an artist and what your aesthetic goals are.

Everyone is drawn to particular artists, designers or crafters more than others, and you can experience the inspiration you feel from your favorites much more fully by exploring your responses to them more deeply.

This, in turn, helps on your own creative path enormously.

You start to notice your own patterns and artistic proclivities more overtly and begin to respect them as your voice, style, and artistic vision. You begin to embrace your own symbolism and artistic values with more intention.

By considering these ideas and consciously delving into your own particular aesthetic experience, you’re engaging in fuller, more serious way with other artists–living or dead–as well as connecting yourself more directly to the larger cultural continuum, and that’s important to do as an artist/designer/crafter.

Including yourself in the larger cultural conversation in this way enriches your aesthetic experience in general and changes how you approach and perceive your own creative endeavors.

It’s another step toward taking charge of your creativity and treating it respectfully. I think it’s powerful.

What do you think? Please leave a comment, I’d love to hear.

You may also want other people to buy your work–your paintings, your beaded jewelry, your silk scarves, your stories, your songs–whatever art or craft work you’re passionate about creating.

You want to sell your work because it feels like a great way to do what you love doing all the time.

However, the other reason you might want to sell your work is that if your creative endeavor makes money, it will be considered legitimate in the larger culture.

Because in our culture, making money equals being successful. If you make money at it, then you’re a “real” whatever it is you are–artist/crafter/singer/writer.

And because the favorite introductory question in our society is “What do you do (for a living)?”, naturally you want to give the answer that reflects your true calling: “I’m an artist.”

Now, whether or not you can make money making your art (whatever that may be) is actually not the point.

The point is that the goal of making a living making your art often creates a serious confusion that muddies your creative goals and ruins the pleasure of the creative process.

It’s the cart that’s sitting in front of your horse.

Your horse is your artwork. It’s the doing, the creativity itself, it’s even the quest to make something great.

But instead of concentrating on creating great work, you’re concentrating instead on how to make a living being creative–and all your work gets tainted by this other, (very difficult, btw) making-a-living goal.

And ironically, this goal is secondary.

What you really want is to make things that are deeply satisfying, work you love to look at–work that you’re proud of.

You want to make your best stuff.

Concentrate on that, and address the money/making a living aspect later.

Don’t ask your art to solve the problem of hating your job or fixing your financial woes. Your art doesn’t deserve that pressure and it spoils your relationship with it.

Solve that problem a different way (at least for now).

Instead, focus on making work you love.

Making a Date with Your Creativity

In order to make work you love, you must make a lot of work. You’ll like some of it, hate some of it, and love some of it. But you have to make a lot.

And that has its own challenges–finding the time, facing your inner critic, honing your skills, etc.

So you need a structure in place to help you make a lot of work.

And one simple, structured way to do that is to make a regular date with your creativity. Which is why I created the Creative  Breakthroughs Collage Tele-class.

I created this class to provide a structure for you to lean on. To make it easier to show up every week for your art because

• It can be hard to muster that energy on your own–even when you want it.
• Because showing up every week is how you eventually start showing up several times a week.
• And showing up several times a week is how you create a lot of work.
• And creating a lot of work is the path to creating work you love.

It’s not easy, but it’s simple.

Making collages with me every week will help all your creative endeavors–regardless of your preferred medium. And making a weekly date with your creativity will genuinely help you build a creative momentum which, in turn, will enable you to make work you love.

And even though I talk about the Creative Breakthroughs Technique, it’s not something to learn and master, it’s more of an avenue in to your own aesthetic journey–a way to explore and consider both the formal aspects of creating–like light, color, balance, and scale–as well as the more expressive considerations–like mood, emotion, memory, and intuition.

So it’s a technique in the way that meditation is a technique: it’s simple enough to learn how and understand the point of it, but the reward is all in the regular practice. It’s a lifetime’s work play.

So create work you love by creating a lot of work. Create a lot of work by connecting it to your life. Connect it to your life by regularly making time to create.

Make time to create by signing up for the Creative Breakthroughs Collage Tele-class. I teach it every Wednesday at two different times–1:30 EST and 7:30 EST.  Sign up for the one that’s best for you.

And jeepers, the first one is free so what are you waiting for?

So when I found out that Ira Glass has made 4 videos on the creative process, I had to watch them.

(Well, ostensibly, he’s talking about story-telling and the art of making stories for the radio because that’s what he does, but really, he’s talking about the creative process. So if you don’t make stories, every time he says the word  “stories” just replace it with the word “visual art” in your mind and it all still works.)

I loved all four, but I’m thinking that you probably won’t watch all four. But you should watch at least one.

So I’ve picked #3 and I’m sticking it here because he talks about something that no one really mentions when they discuss the creative process–what to do when what you make doesn’t measure up to your own taste level–what you personally consider really good.

He talks about why that’s completely normal, and the simple thing you must do to get beyond it. I love that he’s done this.

(And I’m not going to tell you what that simple thing is, because I want you to watch it. )

So even though he’s talking about stories and story-telling, it’s relevant for ALL creators of anything.

Here it is, I hope you watch it:

Your thoughts?

My dad was a football coach for 50 years, my mom golfed, my brother always played 3 sports, and my younger sister and I were swimmers when we were young, and then I played basketball in high school.

Sports was the dominant theme in my house growing up. And we were pretty much always going to practice in some way, shape, or form.

In truth, I kind of wish sports was a little less central to my childhood than it was, but I did get a lot out of it.

The best things I got out of it were:

• experiencing the benefit of practicing even when I didn’t feel like it;
  |
• experiencing the reality of doing something hard and having it get easier;
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• finding out that my best was a moving target–because every time you do your best, you have a new best;
  |
• living through the discomfort of being at my edge and getting to the other side–pushing myself farther than I thought I could–because a coach demanded that we do that.

Being bossed by a coach to your limit may sound sort of awful, but really, those experiences have carried me through many everyday challenges in my adulthood.

I could always suck it up and meet hard deadlines at work because I had to do that all the time as a kid–I knew it would end, I knew I could do it, and I knew I just had to keep my head down and finish.

And it helps me with my artmaking. Because I don’t just believe certain truisms about process, I know them. For instance, I know that practice will improve me.

I know that I’ve been very, very bad at games or techniques that I wanted to do, and I got better by trying and practicing.

And this trying and practicing by playing team sports is usually a public sort of struggle–you can fall on your face in the gym in front of all your classmates, and life goes on.

And more importantly, you go out the next day and do it again. You experience, first hand, the integrity of trying, failing, and coming back for more. The season isn’t over just because you feel disappointed.

And then you find out that disappointment is temporary. (This is huge.)

And as an adult, it helps me work out at the gym. I know the difference between good pain and uh-oh-I-better-stop pain. I know how to mix it up, how to set mini-goals to relieve the boredom, and how to push myself to get the results I want.

I also know that crappy workouts are an unavoidable part of having great workouts.

And I know if I stop for a while altogether, well, I have to get back in shape and I might be uncomfortable as I do that.

So, strange as it might sound, sports is actually a metaphor for my art-making.

My sports metaphor helps me keep trying when I think I suck.

It reminds me that a few minutes is better than no minutes.

It helps me be patient with my progress on this project or that.

And the truths that I laid out in the list above–knowing my best is a moving target for instance–is a physical, visceral knowledge for me. I don’t know it intellectually, I know it in my body.

So that’s me.

What about you?

What experiences or challenges in your life can you draw on to support yourself and your artistic goals and desires?

What’s your metaphor?

Well, class was yesterday and we had a great time. And as I was talking to the class participants about the benefits of carving out a creative time for yourself on a regular basis, I realized how much I was needing this class myself.

Because lately, I’ve been stretching myself tthhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnn-thin-thin. I’ve been doing the juggling act of a lifetime, and some days, I think my head’s going to fall off.

And yesterday afternoon, teaching the class, I could feel the benefits of being creative–it genuinely lifted me out and up from my stress. And the relief I experienced–both physical and mental–felt like a nothing short of a godsend.

I love teaching this class, and I love living the benefits of the class. In the past several weeks, this has been the only art-making I’ve been squeezing in amid my myriad obligations and challenges–and frankly, I was grateful to have it.

There was a time when my creativity would have simply gone out the window with the kind of schedule I’m trying to maintain right now.

And yet, ironically, it’s exactly what I need in order to be able to continue to keep all my balls in the air.

I talk so often about how much this class helps you get unstuck, lets you explore and experiment, helps you build a creative momentum so that you can live your life as the true artist you are–so you can regularly enjoy that feeling of being immersed in aesthetic decisions and artistic expression.

And as artistic people wanting to create artwork, that’s huge.

But in the context of Jennifer’s program, I fully appreciated, maybe even for the first time, the fundamental role in self-care that making a date with your creativity can have. It does nothing less than maintain your sanity and renew your energy.

Creativity feeds our human spirits. We need it. Tapping into your non-verbal mind, moving away from logic and planning, allowing yourself to feel your way along–all these things are essential to your well-being.

Like meditation and exercise, taking the time to be creative regularly will:

• help you perform better at work,
• improve your relationships,
• return you to your child’s mind,
• insert more FUN in your life and
• connect you to your spirit and your wordless understanding of the world.

So please think of the Creative Breakthroughs Collage Tele-class as part of your self-care regimen.

What? You mean you don’t have a self-care regimen?   No time like the New Year to get started! Making a weekly date with your creativity can be the first step in creating one.

And while I believe carving out time to be creative is truly beneficial for everyone, it’s absolutely critical for creative people like us. Your very soul requires it.

So. It’s a new year. 2011! What’s your commitment to your creativity and self-care going to be?

And when I ask that, what I ‘m really saying is:

What are you going to give yourself this year?

Happy New Year!

Last week, I talked about choosing a theme for your creativity in 2011 and I LOVED-LOVED-LOVED all the theme ideas that everyone shared in the comments. So smart, thoughtful, and inspiring.

If you haven’t seen them and are still looking for the perfect theme for yourself, I invite you to please take a look. You might find the perfect idea from someone else’s comment.

My theme for this year is Persistence and I think my tagline is going to be Collaborate (I’m still “honing”).

Now I want to help make it real by creating a vision board or a mind map based on my theme. Will you join me?

This can involve cutting out lots of different images from magazines that relate to your theme, but if that feels too complicated or you can’t find the right images, feel free to just get yourself lots of magic markers and let yourself doodle your way to a fun and inspiring vision board.

Here’s a mind-mapp-y visiony thing I made last year when I my theme was Break Through and my tagline was Have Faith.

I used a giant piece of paper and it took up a huge chunk of wall which I totally recommend if you have the space because it really helps make your theme a priority in your life.

The process of creating a visual expression of your theme helps you develop your ideas about what it means for you and transforms an abstraction into something more concrete. Simple imagery and symbols are a POWERFUL way to help your subconscious really internalize your theme’s message.

For instance, persistence could be expressed by an image of a river.

If I use that as my hook, I could keep exploring that angle by using blue and green markers to doodle up some rushing water swirls and shapes while also expanding on the river idea with more water images that feel persistent–maybe a gorgeous and powerful waterfall, or a picture of a mossy rock softened by a slow imperceptible drip. My tagline, Collaborate, could be expressed by images of symbiotic relationships in nature or even straightforward photos of hands or people working together.

I know all this might sound corny, but it works because our brains respond strongly to symbolism–and the more personal, the better. Remember, it doesn’t have to make sense to anyone except you!

Another Cool Way to Start Your Year Right

The lovely and smart Jennifer Hofmann from Inspired Home Office, (a very cool organizing business for us right-brain-y types) has a super cool program for starting your January off in a very supportive, un-January type way, and I wanted to tell you all about it because I’m thrilled to be involved.

She’s created a month long series of classes and programs called “A Call to Nourish“. And as part of that awesome call for sanity and self-care, I’ll be teaching a Creative Breakthroughs Collage Tele-class, and I’m so excited.

It’s truly an inspiring month of great programs run by very cool roster of powerful and creative women.

This program also includes the chance to participate in 4 of Jennifer’s Office Spa Days which are a fantastic way to get your studio or craft room organized in a sustainable fashion that makes sense to you…I’m planning on attending at least one myself–and as I look around at the chaos I call my studio, maybe make that two…

She’s offering it all at an insanely good price, so please check it out here, and if it feels right, sign yourself up for some sanity and self-care.

Your Turn

How’s your new year starting off?

Do you think you might create a vision board using your theme as your guide? Are you still trying to catch your breath from the holidays? Are you ready to organize your studio or make a date with your creativity by taking a Creative Breakthroughs Collage Class?

Please leave a comment, I’d love to hear from you!