Amen to that! I am thoroughly enjoying The Good Life with Amy Tan at Big Picture Classes. This week, we are stitching on our layouts, and collecting magazine images to collage and create a “vision board”:
According to Christine Kane, “A vision board (also called a Treasure Map or a Visual Explorer or
Creativity Collage) is typically a poster board on which you paste or collage images that you’ve torn
out from various magazines. It’s simple. The idea behind this is that when you surround yourself with
images of who you want to become, what you want to have, where you want to live, or where you want
to vacation, your life changes to match those images and those desires.”
I have not done this yet, but I do something similar when I cut things out of magazines and newspapers that are significant to me and paste them into my Smash book. Amy is encouraging us to do this on a clipboard, so we can see it more easily, and actually, she has made a pretty collage on a manila envelope:
I will do one of these probably later in the week, and in the mean time, I will clip out things I like and put them on my clipboard. This should be fun!
For stitching on paper, Amy gave us a template to use (a house, which I love) that we cut out, and use to trace around on our layout background.
Once I traced the house onto my paper, I put the paper onto an old mouse pad, and punched small holes every half inch on the lines. I didn’t have the right color of cross-stitch floss to use, so I ended up using some baker’s twine which fit the bill nicely. When I saw this template in the classroom, I knew how I wanted to use it right away, so I grabbed my camera and took some impromptu shots of my husband and daughter, which was easier than I thought (they can sometimes be rather camera shy)! So today I got going on my layout, and after I was finished, dear Hubby informed me that Amy’s layout was gorgeous, and I should have done one like hers! At least he’s honest. 
Stitching on paper is easy, and even if you don’t know how to sew or cross-stitch, you will not find this difficult. I enjoy it, and I will probably end up wanting to stitch on everything now!
There is one other thing I would like to share. Ali Edwards’ blog today is about a “photo walkabout” with Liz Ness of Great Photos Plus. She has video posted there which was really great. Four talented women got together at Canon Beach in Oregon for a photography adventure of sorts. They randomly drew an idea from a box, and following that direction, explored the area in search of images to photograph which would fit the requirement (in this case it was looking for shadows….on a rainy day, no less.). At the end of the day, I’m sure they had some fantastic images. Ali suggested to her followers that we so some exploring and see what we can come up with for our ‘weekend lens’. I just happen to be going to the coast for the weekend with my husband for our 6th wedding anniversary, and we will be taking our cameras along. I am über excited, and cannot wait to see what we can come up with. Of course, I’m not following any piece of paper, I’m going to shoot everything!! See you next week!
