Just like in January, I waited until the end of the month to tackle the second monthly One Little Word prompt — making a collage or “vision board” focused on our word and the feelings it evoked. I decided to keep it small and just made mine 8.5×11 instead of doing it on a canvas (as suggested by the workshop).
I actually ended up with two pages, and there’s a bit of a funny story about the first one. The collage you see above is probably ~15 years old, made in a dorm room at Georgia Tech one evening for reasons I can’t entirely remember. Most of the words are cut out of the Technique, the student newspaper (for which I worked as a section editor). The background is from a clothing catalog — Banana Republic maybe, or J Crew?
For something that was probably a 20-minute project at the time, I’ve always liked it, to the point that I’ve never been able to throw it away. (I know, I know. Feel free to comment on my hoarding tendencies.) I made it during a time in my life that felt stressful and stuffed, promising but also overwhelming at times as I tried to figure out where I wanted my life to go.
And so, after 15 years, as I focus on being and doing “enough” this year, I decided this album would be a nice home for it.
The collage I actually made this month is a bit simpler and decidedly more colorful, although that’s not supposed to be a metaphor or anything. I did use my Silhouette to cut out the word “enough” but other than that, I didn’t have many things lying around that I could cut up so this is made from 1) Real Simple magazines, 2) a program from the Quilt Festival and 3) washi tape. I like how it turned out. Looking at it makes me feel happy but relaxed.
The one thing I did realize as I was putting this into my album is that not once during February did I look back at the thoughts and intentions I wrote down in January. February was kind of a weird, oversubscribed month for me so it is what it is — but I want to make sure to look back on those thoughts every so often as I go through the rest of the year to keep them fresh in my mind.
