Picturing Our Lives
A collage of how I envision my future. Created in Canva, a free online graphic design tool.
Twenty years ago, I was introduced to collaging through The Illustrated Discovery Journal by Sarah Ban Breathnach. I began collecting images and words from magazines, postcards, and journals. Then, following Sarah's guidance, I began creating theme-based collages. Recently, I looked at the collage I had created for the theme, Someday, and realized I have journeyed into the future I had envisioned twenty years ago!
Collages, or vision boards, are a powerful tool to help us imagine what the future could look like. A collection of quotations, pictures, or other visuals they convey our goals and inspirations. Vision boards usually focus on a specific theme or period and are highly personalized.
According to Psychology Today, vision boards are mental practices that can increase confidence, motivation, and even motor performance while reducing stress. The article goes on to say that, compared to other types of stimuli, the brain tends to put a higher value on visual imagery. Visual representations are usually more memorable than words. Because of that, a vision board may stick out in your mind more than a to-do list.
This week, I want to introduce you to three women from the Ageless Possibilities community who are enriching their journey rowing north through collaging.
Creating Myself As a Joyful Old Crone
Annie started collaging in grade school. As an adult, she uses collage to process ideas, emotions, and decisions. For her, collaging is a means of telling a story.
A YouTube video introduced her to creating collages inside old books destined for the trash. Frustrated by her inability to garden like she used to, she turned her creative garden energies to this new medium.
Annie finds a theme she wants to explore - or it finds her! An image or poem usually inspires her; that inspiration can run the gambit from troubling thoughts to expressions of joy and gratitude.
She has created books on dance, gardening, scientific mysteries, and poems. Recently, she finished a collage series on Creating Myself as a Joyful Old Crone, celebrating women's wisdom.
Pages from Annie’s Creating Myself as a Joyful Old Crone, celebrating women's wisdom.
Annie scours used book sales and second-hand stores for books she can alter and images she can use. She is drawn to vintage and nature images. She often creates collages in repurposed board books for children. Words play a key role in her collages. She incorporates passages from Shakespeare, religious texts, dictionaries, and foreign language books.
Her collages continue to provide a way to explore ideas and emotions. However, her main reason for collaging is a sense of creative peace.
I have come to know Annie through my life story workshops. She has a raw, emotional writing style that is flavoured with humour. Annie also writes a weekly blog, Annie's Journey. She writes about life - the good, the bad, and the ugly. You can find Annie at https://www.anniesjourney.com/ or on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annies_journey77/#
The Goddess Within
Cathy began using art and journaling as therapy after retirement. She creates intriguing montages of women and quotes, and her collages range from the whimsical to deep reflections on growing older. As a child, she was very creative and attempted various crafts - painting, drawing, knitting, and pottery, to name a few. Then, as adult life obligations got in the way, her art took a backseat. Until retirement, when she found herself again through her artwork.
Cathy initially discovered collaging through Teesha Moore. whose collages are whimsical and deep and opened up a whole new world for Cathy to discover. Her own collage work is usually a combination of her personal art drawings and magazine images. Cathy always starts with a quote. “Then I start drawing, and the image just seems to flow through my fingers,” she explains. “I’m never quite sure what I’ll end up with! The same can be said with collage pieces - sometimes I go with similar colour palettes, and sometimes I go for a mood to match the quote and/or drawing.”
Cathy uses an art journal to make her collages. She creates almost every day. She also creates canvas pieces.
Cathy’s latest collages focus on ageing gracefully, the goddess within, empowerment, and self-care.
She shares that her art is her therapy. She is amazed at how her artwork has morphed into her own style. The quotes she now uses have also shifted, focusing more on ageing gracefully, the goddess within, empowerment, and self-care.
Cathy, who lives on a 12-acre property on the Canadian prairie, is an avid gardener and proud mother, stepmother and grandmother. She is retired from a 32-year nursing career that took her to many exciting places, including Tasmania, Australia, and the Northwest Territories in Canada. You can find her on Instagram at @myretirementjourney.
Setting Intentions Through Collage
Shelly has been creating a January collage for decades to coincide with her birthday. “I think it began as an unconscious manifesting practice way back in high school with friends, cutting out images from Seventeen magazine and GQ to decorate our locker doors.” These days it’s consciously about setting intentions, sometimes with friends in mini-retreats. Inspired by her sister’s suggestion, she began designing her vertical collages to loosely match a 9-square feng shui bagua map. As a writer, words hold power for her, so she spends as much time clipping headlines and even small sentences out of magazines.
Shelly glues her collages into an 18 x 24-inch spiral sketch pad that sits on an easel in her office. Her older collages fit perfectly in the bottom of an antique trunk, like a time capsule. What’s fun about keeping the collages together, she says, is seeing the continuity of themes over time. Or when she notices how collage images turn into unexpected events—like the staircase that foretold a new walk-out apartment. One year, her sister helped her notice that she had several images of arms wide open, and another of hands holding tight, and she sat with that wondering all year. “Not everything comes true, but collaging shows me what I hope might happen someday, such as next books or travel. When life brings surprises, my annual collage grounds me in what matters to my soul.”
Two of Shelley’s collages from 2012 (L) and 2022 (R) reveal common themes about creativity, being open to change, and all-around pep talks for the soul.
Shelly is a publisher, author, photographer, and author coach. She is the author of The Courage Way and founder of Creative Courage Press in Colorado, where she is collaborating with other authors to create more courage for the complexity of being human. Her next book, Eleven Brave Pinecones, is for children and goes with an oracle card deck called Supposing: Reflections for Accessing Your Wise Inner Artist. You can find her on one of her websites, www.creativecouragepress.com and www.emotikin.com or on Instagram at @shellylfrancis.
I know many of you also collage, as a creative endeavour or as a tool for manifesting your dreams and plans for the future. Leanne, the blogger behind Cresting the Hill, is a creative dabbler, and that includes collage. She writes that she collages by cutting out background pieces and replacing them with different images, overlaying, painting, glitter gluing, and whatever else catches her fancy. One of my life story participants shared that she does collage series, often with one common element. Tracy, at Travel Bug Tonic, recently facilitated a workshop on creating a travel vision board. Check out her blog post, A Powerful Tapestry of Wanderlust: how to create a Travel Vision Board, to learn about her experiences and instructions on creating vision boards, and be sure to read about her woo-woo moment when her visualizing came true!
Do you collage, envisioning your future? If you do, feel free to email me a photo of one of your collages and a short description, at ageless possibilities@shaw.ca in the next few days. I’ll share your collages in my newsletter to Ageless Possibilities subscribers next week.