Archives for January 2019

What’s Your Super Power (Word)?

Happy New Year! Are you ready for 2019? I know lots of you, like me, were happy to see 2018 to the door. When I was thinking about topics for this week’s tutorial, I had a few ideas, but my thoughts kept returning to just one. If you’re into social media, I know your Facebook and Instagram feeds have been flooded with chatter about New Year’s resolutions. And if you’re like me, resolutions are just wishes! Experts say it takes three months of repetition for a change to become a habit; how many of us actually stick to those diet plans, those vows to exercise more, that vague promise to ‘be more organized’, for that long? <insert laugh track here> Resolutions are things we have to DO. And I don’t like being told what to do. <wink>

What works better for me is to choose a ‘power word’ for the upcoming year, a word for me to strive to BE. If you’ve seen the annual challenge by the maven of scrapbooking, Ali Edwards, called One Little Word, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Choosing that one little word is harder than it sounds. Like making resolutions, it requires a certain amount of introspection and soul-searching. The first time I chose a power word was at the beginning of 2010. I was going through a very difficult chapter in my life then and had no idea how it would come out in the end. But I’d been through tough times before and I knew I’d come through this one too. So the word I chose was PERSEVERE. Yes, it’s an action, something I had to do, but it was also a state of mind and a state of being. Guess what… I PERSEVERED and came out the other side in much better shape than I expected. This time last year I was in a great mood with a new grandchild on the way and a trip to Ireland to find my roots in the offing. My power word was ANTICIPATE… and ANTICIPATE I surely did! By the end of the year, it had morphed into ENDURE after my husband’s accident in September. Thankfully things are 90% back to normal, and I’m entering into 2019 on a more optimistic footing. I know this year will bring challenges… after all, it’s LIFE, and that’s a challenge all by itself. But with my rose-coloured glasses firmly in place, I’m choosing POSSIBILITY as my power word this year. I usually tend to look at the glass as being half empty, but I’m making a conscious affirmation to look at the POSSIBILITY that things will go well.

Now, how do YOU go about choosing a power word for the year? If you’ve already made some resolutions, you can use them as a framework. Do you see a theme? Is there an impending event in the future that you’re already aware of, either with excitement or dread? Are things going well for you, or are you really struggling right now? There are a number of online resources designed to help choose a power word. One that I particularly like is found at Heidi‘s blog Happiness is Homemade. She has a list of options, and one of them is sure to resonate with you. Another resource is on Jess‘s blog, Cultivate What Matters.

When you go to scrap your power word, the only constraint is your imagination. You could  choose a grungy, moody art journal style if that’s how you’re feeling, you could find a photo or a few that represent the theme, you could put it into a word cloud. You could create an acrostic with it and embellish the meaning using synonyms. So many options!!

I scrapped my guiding word today, with ADB Designs‘ gorgeous Coming to America bundle. My photo was taken in October when my husband, my son and I made a previously-planned-therefore-not-going-to-be-postponed-even-for-a-knee-injury trip to British Columbia. It’s the view from Tower Ranch Hillside Park in Kelowna, a spectacular vista I’ve fallen in love with. To me it’s the visual representation of POSSIBILITY – the sky really IS the limit!

Next week we’ll get back to the nuts-and-bolts of digital scrapbooking. Thank you for indulging my navel-gazing!

PS… for Rochelle (roxyrenders): Your comment on my Happy Holidays layout reads: “Wow- what kind of magic did you work on the wordart stamp? It almost seems as if it is glowing!” Simple little tricks! I first duplicated the mask/stamp layer. I applied a fine glitter style to the bottom-most of the two, then decreased the opacity of the layer to about 50% – that’s what creates the glow. Then on the upper layer, I clipped an ivory-and-gold foil brocade patterned paper (from JoCee Designs‘ December bundle) to the mask, then changed the Blend Mode to Hard Light. It’s just that easy!