The February assignment for Ali Edward’s One Little Word workshop was all about creating a vision board. I’ve created quite a few collages in my day, but this prompt came right after I sold all of our extra magazines. And I’m not about to cut into our vast Wired or Creating Keepsakes-before-everyone-left collections. I decided to keep the spirit of the assignment and created a word collage instead of an image collage!

First I painted a canvas teal and added a bit of texture by mixing silver and white glitter paint and brushing it lightly over the canvas while the teal was still wet.

Eliza painted her canvas red, because she’s doing the assignment too! She’s chosen some images from magazines, marked them with post-its, and we’ll scan and print them for her vision board just as soon as we buy some yellow ink for our printer.

A few days after painting my canvas, I started on the words. I could have used my old school Silhouette to cut out letters, but I decided to take the extra time to cut out letters myself rather than track down the cord I needed. I measured the canvas and printed out letters slightly shorter than the height of the canvas. I used the rulers in Photoshop to measure the text, and I chose a simple sans-serif font.

I cut out each letter to make a stencil of sorts and arranged them on the canvas.

Then I started filling in each letter with words. I tried not to over think it. I just thought of words that are connected to FINISH for me. A lot of them relate to my intentions and actions, but not all of them do. What matters is that they all have meaning for me. They represent what I’d like to accomplish this year.

I tried to mix different “fonts” of sorts of my handwriting: cursive, all caps, and all lowercase. Changing the “font” and the size of the words makes each word distinguishable.

I really love this project. I love that, when standing close, it’s the individual words that are most visible and that, when standing far away, the big “FINISH’ is most visible. I can’t wait to decide where to hang it!

I’d love to see your take if you are participating! Leave a link in the comments section.

Want more?

• Read all of my One Little Word posts.
• Our DIY Typography Art Tutorial is cool too.
• Want more stuff that shows off your word? I did a guest tutorial on Punk Projects for Handpainted Word Mugs.
• A lot of our friends are doing One Little Word too! Check out Laura’s posts on CHANGE, Amy’s BRAVE posts, Kam’s BRAVE posts, and Kristin’s WRITE posts.

P.S. If you’re interested in One Little Word, it’s not to late to sign up! The assignments can be completed at any time, and you’ll always have access to the class content. You can sign up through the end of the year.

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