Push! 2012 is a blog series on Paperclipping. We are dedicated to pushing boundaries and thriving in various areas in which we’re trying to learn or improve, and we’re using journals or Plan + Progress books to help us do that. Read about this series here. You can see all of the related Push! 2012 posts here.
Use your learning journal to create mantras. Whisper these mantras to yourself in your head as you you’re working or practicing to help you as you go along.
This is a practice I started unintentionally because I was keeping a dance journal. I write down the instructions and corrections of my teachers in my journal. Then at my next classes, I recall many of those instructions as I prepare to dance:
- Relax the jaw and the shoulders.
- Think about shooting straight up on the turn while feeling a balanced suspended rib cage.
- Go deeper into the plie for more dynamics and power.
- Lengthen through and beyond the fingers and toes.
While my example is for dance, this applies to any area you’re working to learn. Since Paperclipping is a scrapbooking site, let’s say that your area of focus for Push! is scrapbooking. If you’re a Paperclipping Member and you are keeping a learning journal for scrapbooking, you might make some notes in your journal after watching a video tutorial that lists new insights you got and areas you want to improve.
If you tend to write long drawn out thoughts, be sure to write some instructions in short memorable phrases that you can remember and use as scrapbooking mantras for when you sit down to scrap. This applies whether your journal is for gardening, quilting, drawing, or anything else. But here are some scrapbooking mantras you’ve probably heard in my videos:
- Everything is fixable.
- There is power in numbers.
- Contrast is the key to layering.
- Invest in actions that give you the biggest impact with smaller output.
- Your photos tell you where they want you go to.
- Symmetry has powerful initial impact.
- Asymmetry evokes curiosity and draws you into the details.
- Horizontal and vertical lines that intersect evoke strength and stability.
- Diagonal lines evoke energy, instability, and movement.
When you have an idea but you’re afraid you’ll mess up your page if you try, you might remind yourself that “everything is fixable.” Hopefully this mantra will help you to take the risk because you implanted it in your mind when you wrote it in your journal.
As someone who teaches design there are little reminders that float into my head as I’m scrapbooking and here are some that swam through as I made this page, Twisted Trunk:
- Use lines to lead the eye.
- Scatter each of the colors at two or three points around the page.
- Balance the colors in triangles and diagonals.
- Keep the eye moving into and around the center of the page.
- An option for embellishment gatherings are “book end” gatherings.
You’ll accumulate more mantras as you journal what you’re learning on your subject. With enough practice, you’ll eventually lose your need to repeat some of them because they’ll become second nature. That’s how powerful it is to keep track of anything you’re trying to learn!
Push! 2012 Participant Check-in: Let us know how you’re doing and please link us to any blog post that shares your own experience! If you’re doing a learning journal, I’d love to hear how the subject of mantras applies to your subject! Anyone is invited to jump into Push! at any time.