I stopped setting goals and resolutions a few years ago and found that I accomplished more without them.

It’s not that I have no dreams or ambitions. I just think specific goal-setting is less productive, uses up lots of valuable time, and can close your mind to opportunities outside of the specific goal you set for yourself.

So what do I do instead?

Last year I chose a word for the year that related to all of my areas of interest and I developed a chant — or a list of mantras — that I said to myself most days while meditating. That helped to keep my focused.

Then partway through the year I figured out an approach that helped me to be even more successful in my desired areas — again, without setting goals.

And that’s what this post is about — I’m starting a new year-long series here at Paperclipping (in addition to the Photo Stories series) where I’ll be sharing the process with you, and I hope many of you will jump on board and share back!

Thrive! 2012

Thrive! 2012 is all about keeping track of progress, developing empowering plans, keeping important relevant information, and documenting what you’re learning — all in the area(s) in which you’re interested in improving or learning skills.

These journals or Plan + Progress books will help you develop whatever it is you want, and at the same time they’ll become a document of the journey you took to get there!

Here’s the story of how this started for me and why I’m so passionate about this…

This fall I added seven new dance classes to the one I’d been taking already. I may be too old to become a professional dancer, but there’s no reason I can’t fulfill my own dreams of dancing for myself — not just casually, but with a real effort to learn and improve my skill.

I bought myself a journal where I could document what I learned or worked on in each class session:

• class corrections from the teacher
• personal corrections from the teacher
• areas I was focusing on for a lesson
• improvement I was seeing
• instructions or choreography I felt I needed help remembering

Do you know how much journaling has helped? Before the journaling, attending class was almost like starting over every week. Progress was slow. Once I started journaling I saw sudden rapid improvement and my daughter has commented numerous times how fast I was learning things.

I’m now an enthusiastic convert of journals and smash books and folders and binders that are dedicated to learning and tracking progress! I have been starting new journals or Plan + Progress books of varying types for each of the areas I’m trying to make real strides in.

It’s my opinion that if there is anything you’re serious about learning or improving, keeping a journal that is dedicated to the subject is one of the best things you can do.

Way more motivating and helpful than making a list of goals.

Way more instructive, too.

And way more flexible, encouraging you to take advantage of unexpected opportunities throughout the year; opportunities that you could never have seen way back on January 1st.

Here are the books I’ve been using and their purposes:

1. Gardening + Planting (potted and un-potted, indoor and outdoor).
2. Home Decorating
3. Dance
4. Work – Paperclipping
5. Art (not shown)
6. Drawing and sketching
7. Food Menu
8. Doodle Brainstorming
9. Sleep Journal – This is an online journal for the Zeo.

Some of them are more about journaling to track progress (Dance, Art, Drawing). That’s what I mean when I refer to a journal.

Others are more about brainstorming and planning ahead in order to make things happen (Home Decorating, Work, Food Menu). This is what I call a Plan + Progress book.

Throughout this month I’ll share photos and details of my various journals and Plan + Progress books. I’ll share the type of book I’m using, what the purpose is, and how I’m tracking and planning in that book.

Then I’ll post updates with photos of my books throughout the rest of the year.

Anyone else here dedicated to improving a specific area of your life? Want to start a journal or Plan + Progress book to help you do it?

Please leave a comment to let us know what area(s) you’re focusing on. If you’re ready, tell us what type of system you think you’ll use (journal or Plan + Progress book).

As we continue with Thrive! 2012 this month and through the year, I’d love to see photos of your own books and what you’re doing with them! You’ll have opportunities to share with us when I post my updates!

What’s the difference between a rut and a groove?

If you have a scrapbooking groove, you have systems that work for you — things you do that get you inspired and make your page-building process easier.

What is a rut?

A rut is similar to a groove in one way only — you have a system for seeing and doing. There is a big difference, though. A rut is not inspiring. It keeps you down and prevents you from seeing up over its high walls. We forget there are other ways and systems.

While a groove-system inspires new ideas, rut-systems blind you from them. Early last spring I realized I had dug my groove into a deep rut.

How do you know if you’re in a rut?
If you find yourself feeling uninspired every time you try to scrapbook, or if your completed pages don’t excite you, you’re probably in a rut. Don’t worry though, you can get out!

In 2010 and early 2011 I found that most every page I made left me feeling unsatisfied. Most of them just felt “ok,” but I didn’t love them. The moment I climbed my way out of that rut (and it wasn’t hard!), scrapbooking suddenly became exhilarating again! And I’m back to loving my pages!

How to Get Out of a Rut
I’m sure it’s not the only exit route, but I can tell you how I got out of my recent rut. I exposed myself to some different ways of scrapbooking by putting myself into an environment where there were lots of different inspiring and talented scrapbookers.

There are all kinds of options for this type of learning and exposure. The one that worked for me was the True Scrap event from last April. It showed me that the rut I’d fallen into did not groove with my own personality.

Here are some of the results that came from the inspiration I got from True Scrap:

Jen McGuire inspired the butterfly I made for this introduction page that goes on the front of my album about myself.

Shimelle Laine and Nic Howard both reminded me of how I’ve loved layering papers in the past and this page was born.

Lain Ehmann suggested we write our journaling the same way we talk to friends, which inspired more of that style of journaling on my pages, along with these two 6×12 pages, which I attach to my layout. The journaling begins with, “So, here’s a funny story…”

And overall I remembered that color, asymmetry, and organic shape is more reflective of my personality and the way I view my world and my life than the way I’d been scrapbooking recently.

If you’ve been feeling unsatisfied lately, could it be that you’ve fallen into a rut without realizing it, like me?

If so, why don’t you join us for the True Scrap event later this month? I’ll be teaching about layering embellishments into intricate gatherings. Jen McGuire, Lain Ehmann, Shimelle Laine, and Nic Howard will all be back to teach again, too, plus many other awesome teachers.

Click here to learn more about the event or sign up!

(note: this is my affiliate link).

May you always know whether your systems are pulling you down into a rut or pushing you into the groove!

A couple weekends ago I went to Berkeley to experience the very thing I recently wrote about many of you experiencing as you try to figure out how to actually implement the design principles as you learn them. You know that middle ground where you logically know a concept, like design principles, but the actual implementation part is still difficult?

It doesn’t matter that for the past five years I’ve helped students in school to identify how the greatest masters of art used design in their work. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been using design principles, myself, and teaching them to scrapbookers for almost as long. I felt like many of you when I was at Flora Bowley’s art workshop, but it was a beautiful and enriching experience that I’m so excited to share with you!

I’ve had very little experience with composition and design when it comes painting, where you create every aspect of the piece yourself. With photography, the subjects are already there and it’s just a matter of arranging them through your choice of angles. With scrapbooking, the main subjects are almost always the photos themselves, and even the other pieces usually come pre-designed.

It was good to put myself back into a situation of remembering the fears you must ignore when you understand a concept in your head, but don’t have experience with the actual implementation. The best opportunities for growth come by trying new things, and Flora Bowley and the girls at the Teahouse Studio made it such an awesome and wonderful experience!

Flora Bowley

Here are a few of Flora’s recent paintings…

I love Flora’s art. Her art itself is one of the main reasons I wanted to take a class from her. But in reading about her, and in taking her two-day workshop, I found that her painting process and her teaching methods are phenomenal, no matter what your tastes in art are.

Fine Art vs. Folk Art

By definition, folk art has a purpose, whereas fine art is for the sake of the art itself. Scrapbooking is folk art. It’s purpose is personal story-telling or memory-keeping. In scrapbooking I emphasize one thing: know your story before you start. That way your design and supply choices can help you tell your story visually. This makes sense for a scrapbooker.

Painting is fine art. The artist doesn’t have to have a story or direction at the beginning, or even at the end. So in that way, Flora’s process is opposite of how I scrapbook. With Flora’s process, the point at the beginning is to get all kinds of color, texture, line-quality, shapes, lots of variation, on the canvas. In this stage there is no unity, no focal point, no visual path, no regard for where you will go with the painting. You don’t worry about what your painting is going to look like in the end, or whether you have a point or purpose with the piece. It’s very freeing!

In many ways, it’s like art journaling over and over again in multiple layers on a canvas — on the same canvas. You just keep playing and layering. As you do so, you discover techniques, textures, designs, and color combinations you like. You let those things be your inspiration for your painting as you continue to layer.

In Flora’s words:

• Let go of expectations.
• Focus on the process, not the final piece.
• Allow the painting to emerge naturally through your own process of discovery.
• Trust yourself.

Even though I believe in identifying our stories at the beginning of scrapbooking, Flora’s philosophy resonates with my philosophy of focusing on building your foundation before thinking ahead to the detailing of the embellishments: trust your foundation — the placement of your photos and the creation of lines through the anchoring pieces, and then you will have natural homes for the embellishments to come later.

I’m so used to working with my focal point first, though, that I was constantly thinking ahead to how my first stage might effect the end result, and after floundering, I finally found that Flora was right when it came to the painting — with her process, thinking too far ahead is disabling. Once I let go of that desire to plan ahead, it all came together in the most magical way!

Here’s the crazy beginning stage I had on one of my canvases, along with my attempts to plan for the end result.

By the end of the two days, I was nowhere near finished and I didn’t have a clue where I was going with this painting. Flora gave us a few last seconds to do something big on the canvas so I grabbed a brush, put some blue color on it and swiped it back and forth about five times. And then I thought, “Uggh!”

But I did what Flora teaches: I put it away for the night and the next morning I pulled it out so I could find something — even if it was just one thing — that I liked.

Identify What You Like. Find the Image In the Clouds

And I did find something I liked. It was the top few inches of part the canvas!

When you identify something you like on the canvas, your task is to do more of that. So I knew that would be my direction as I continued to add and layer.

Flora also says to step back and look for accidental images — much like how we see images in the clouds. As I was looking at my painting, I found this…

Doesn’t that look like a dove? It did to me.

After I got my painting home I worked with those two things: the top three inches and the dove, and started working with them to bring them out around my painting. I was timid at first, afraid to touch the dove. In fact, I toyed with letting it become a tropical fish, because I was afraid to give her a beak or change her coloring to bring more of her out! You can probably see how thinking of her as a fish influenced the other things on my painting. Do you see any octopi that grew out of my subconscious…?

But ultimately I knew I wanted a dove and not a fish. So I stepped up and added darker blue + white to bring her out. I’m so glad I did!

I also thought back to some crazy awesome flowers I found walking around town in Berkley. I took a picture on my iPhone for future inspiration, but didn’t actually refer back to the picture when making my own. I didn’t need them to be exact replicas.

I’m not quite done with the painting, though it’s getting closer. I will be “spiraling in,” as Flora teaches, to work with abandon to achieve more of that accidental goodness that results, and I’ll be “spiraling out” to work more thoughtfully to bring balance and more unity to the painting so the eye moves around it in a more purposeful way until it feels finished.

Experiment To Find the Painting

So basically, Flora’s process is to experiment (and she teaches lots of techniques to try as you experiment) on your canvas, all the while identifying what you like and finding the images that show up by accident (or adding your own in if you don’t come across any accidental ones). As you continue to add layers, you can leave windows into the earlier layers.

The awesome thing about this workshop is that it works for any level of painter. I think there were more beginners in our class than there were experienced ones. I’m a beginner and I loved this free-form process! I plan to take her workshop again, and if you have any interest in art and paint I recommend you try it! She is such a great teacher and her paint process is accessible and so much fun! She travels around, so here is her schedule.

Teahouse Studio

I can’t leave out the experience of taking a workshop at the Teahuse Studio, itself. Steph, Mati, and Tiffany of the studio were awesome hosts. They made us all feel comfortable and welcome, like friends. They accommodated my vegan diet and provided us with amazing catered lunches that were fresh and delicious! They made it easy to find a hotel within walking distance. There is a Dick Blick brick-and-mortar just down the street!

Teahouse Studio hosts regular artful workshops on writing, crafting, photography, and other topics. So if you can see yourself venturing into Berkeley (it’s a fun place to visit) you should check out the schedule! There are some fun workshops coming up!

Have you ventured out of your comfort zone recently? I can’t think of a better way to enhance your creativity and enliven your soul than to try something new!

I had this ugly, plain boring lampshade and I just painted what I call, “Abundance Circles,” onto it.

BEFORE

How to Get Ideas: Observe and Experiment

The idea came from this doodling on a receipt in my car…

Doodling the random things that catch your eye can lead you to lots of different ideas later — especially if you keep your doodles together some place. I keep mine in my scrap journal and my sketch book.

The doodle started when I was pulling out of a parking space, and an unusual pedestrian path caught my eye. I grabbed a receipt and sketched it on the far left, and then I had a spontaneous desire to add the circles and make it a tree. I was feeling whimsical.

I liked the tree top, but not the trunk, so I tried again on the right side of the receipt. And you can see that two days later I tried again a third time and was really happy with the results. I made a note that the tree top felt like abundance to me. Later when I flipped through my book and saw it, I added a note saying I was calling my tree an Abundance Tree.

Refining Your Doodles

Later I sat down with a Copic Multi-Liner and tried making a tree that I could actually use for scrapbooking and mixed-media art. In the process I devised a trunk I really loved, though my tree ended up looking more like a mushroom. I made a mental note that the circles were too tight and tried again, this time adding color with my Copic Sketches…

Here’s another example of where doodling has led me to an eventual hand-made embellishment for scrapbooking…

Grocery List Doodle: Happy Mushroom Colony…

Refining the Happy Mushroom Colony in my Scrap Journal…

Making a Happy Mushroom Colony as a Scrapbook Embellishment…

I’m sure I will eventually use my abundance tree in a scrapbook or mixed-media project, and I’m already making more.

Translating Your Ideas into Different Mediums and Styles

The key is asking yourself the question in the first place — “How can I translate this piece of inspiration into something else?”

I’ve been asking myself how I could translate my Abundance Trees into a painting project. Because I had the question in my head, I got the answer when I saw this dress on Elsie Flannigan. I saved the dress to my Art Inspiration board on Pinterest and decided I would use it as inspiration to dress up my boring lamp shade. I practiced first in my art journal…

I didn’t try to copy the pattern on Elsie’s dress. I took one more look at it before pulling out my paints, and then closed the picture. There are two reasons I rarely try to copy directly when doing artistic projects…

1. You set yourself up for frustration and negative self-talk because it’s very difficult to copy something just right. In fact, sometimes your own project actually needs you to do it a little differently and it’s hard to see that need if you’re copying. I think of my sources as inspiration, rather than a source to copy exactly.
2. If you study the inspiration piece beforehand, and then put it away when you’re actually going to work on your project, you free yourself to make the piece your own.

This is how I use inspiration for my scrapbooking as well. I almost never scraplift, but I sometimes do think back to a layout I liked recently and I recall the overall idea of why I liked it. If you do that, you benefit from the inspiration of others, but you’ll make projects that are completely your own.

So now, from noticing a pedestrian walk and and doodling it into my scrap journal, I’ve developed some art I can use for scrapbooking, for mixed-media projects, and for painting projects as well. It’s amazing how it all flows for you when you pay attention to your environment, act on your observations and idea bursts, experiment with them, develop them, and ask yourself how-questions.