Revisiting Paintings

I’ve been cutting up old watercolor pieces this month 🫣 

You don’t realize how precious something is until you get the scissors out!   

But I'm building collages with the paper snippets—new colorful scenes—so after the first few cuts, the nervous fear transforms into a sort of growing excitement at what could happen next. 

This is one of the newest additions, Eye Candy.

Collage-making also opens your eyes to the value of things that DON’T feel precious.

A 8x10 piece I’m working on right now uses part of a brown mailer envelope and some printed cards, along with the expected watercolor cutouts. And in my personal junk journal, I’ve been using some colorful junk mail envelopes, magazines, and flyers.

(Side note: if you're looking for a hobby that's inexpensive and helpful for sorting through little mementos you've collected, I highly recommend you try junk journaling!)

Revisiting Priorities

Turns out, life is a collage...

...with so much to sort through. For me, it's old books. Old clothes. Even some old ideas. I'm realizing that when they said:

"Nothing you go through is ever wasted."

They didn't mean for us to hang on to everything. 

Before we can build something beautiful from all that Past Stuff (whether it's physical items, painful memories, or goals that no longer apply)...

We need to sort through it. To see what we have, and to decide what to prioritize.

So, here’s what I’m mulling over as I build my next collage. 

🍄 Is this valuable item (or plan, or goal, or belief) something I want to save as-is? Rework into a new form? Or get rid of altogether?

🍄 What have I overlooked in the past—and what value does it actually have? Again, this could be physical items, but it also includes ideas. (Those are the hardest to identify and sort through sometimes.)

And then, because the process of cutting and re-assembling paper snippets has felt more like play than anything I've done in a long time:

🍄 Have I focused so much on productivity that I no longer get to relax? Where did that idea come from? And how could I infuse joy back into my work—into my day? 

That last question might look different for you. The point is to revisit, and then rework things you've been holding onto for years.

By definition, collages transform old things into something completely new.

Which is rewarding, but also uncertain. If you’re reevaluating some bigger things in your own life right now, I don’t have nice neat answers or a definite outcome for you. 

But I suspect that as with everything else, taking action will start to make things clearer.

Pull out your collection. Make a few cuts. And see what happens 🫶🏼