In Feng Shui one of the nine areas of the bagua is called Creativity and Children. Although all areas are equally important and interdependent for me personally this is probably my favorite area of life for I’m all about creativity. More and more as I look around these days it seems to me that the biggest thing that ails us silly humans is that we have become so disconnected from our essential creative natures.A great way to link back up with your creativity and energize this part of your life is by spending some time making a collage. Gather up some old magazines, a pair of scissors, paper and some glue. I like rubber cement. For paper you can use card stock, poster board, mat board or even plain copy paper.
With all your materials in front of you set an intention for what you would like to create. It can be a general intention such as, “I’d like to make a collage that represents creativity to me.” Some other great topics to collage on include going in search of lost parts of your soul and help from your Spirit Guides. There are infinite topics to collage and I’ll be discussing new ones here each time I blog to give you ideas.
Once your intention is set you can dive into the magazines. I like to flip through them quickly and rip out any images that say, “Yum!” to me. I do this quite fast so that my left brain doesn’t have time to analyze why I like certain images. I work by feeling with my eyes, not by thinking with my mind. To me my collage time is a sacred feast for my eyes and imagination. Collage is like a party for your right brain.
After I’ve gathered a small stack of 5-10 different images I then take a look to see if there are any themes emerging. Often the theme is a color. There will be several images either all the same color or complementary colors that are just crying out to be together in a collage.
Next I begin trimming away any excess around the image that I don’t want to be included in my collage such as words from advertisements. Then I place them on my paper surface and begin sliding them around to see where they might want to live. Often I start with a larger background scene and then layer smaller images on top of it.
It’s always fascinating to me with each collage I make that the more I can surrender to the wisdom of the images I choose, the more they guide me. They come together in mysterious ways like pieces of a puzzle to form a soul snapshot that I somehow misplaced. The more you can understand yourself on a soul level, the more balance you can bring into your home and life. Try it and see for yourself!
Tags: creativity, intentions
Thanks, Donna, for explaining how you “collage”.
I’ve been meaning to try this type of activity for a while but I wasn’t sure how to go about it.
No excuses now – I’ll see what evolves on Saturday when I willl have time to devote to the activity.
Many thanks once again
I absolutely LOVE collage. This year, as I was savoring the process of creating my Vision Seed Map (aka collage) for 2008, I kept being attracted to a series of images that were nearly exactly the same color. One set was an olivey-celadon green and the other was orangey crimson.
Before I finished the Vision Seed Map, I found myself playing with these two sets of images. The collages that were born out of that intuitive, color mediation are so beautiful. I placed the celadon one in the Helpful People & Travel area of my office. The crimson one is in the hall, visible out of the corner of my eye as I type.
It was a wonderful experience and very freeing to me — to do these two collages virtually intention-free while also engaged in creating the intention-rich collage for 2008. The only intention was to enjoy the images and their outrageous textural complexity all within one color. I have resisted my natural tendency and impulse to analyze the images, their juxtaposition, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I am savoring just enjoying their Being … and the Being State that birthed them.
I’d share them with you as I have taken photos of them — except I have NO idea how to do that within this blog format.
Thanks for reminding me of my collage art love.
Kathleen
Thanks, Donna. I love your approach to collage and you have a wonderful way of communicating the process. I am always intrigued by how things surprise me, in terms of themes or colors or insights. And, your post makes me think I need to jump in and do it more!
p.s. “party for your right brain”… I love that description!
Hello to All Ye Collagers!
Yes, isn’t it such a wonderful way to explore ourselves and thus enhance our personal feng shui as Catherine was talking about in her post?
Thanks so much to all of you for this wonderful feedback.
And if you have any questions or areas of collage you’d like to see me discuss, please let me know.
More to come, soon….