the creative notebook: 2026 visions
on vision boards, starter pages, and starting over. without all the pesky resolutions and rush.
I am starting the new year slow but strong. And if you’re leaning towards the slow part of it, it’s not too late to do a little visioning of your own.
Long ago, I rejected the idea of new year’s resolutions. I’m more of a “spring is the start of the new energy” kind of girl, that resolutions facing cold, dreary, exhausted January were just asking to create disappointment in yourself. That moving with the seasons, with the agricultural year, makes a lot more sense for new projects and vows to grow into a better person.
But I’m also a planner lover, even if it’s a DIY Bullet Journaling planner. A new planner just begs for you to consider your plans for the new year, so years ago I replaced those resolutions with new year goals. New year bucket lists. New year habits to build over time. For a while I would pick a ‘word” for the year, setting a tone or a gentle reminder of where to focus and what to live into in this new year. Even if I wasn’t resolving to never eat sugar ever again, no not ever—I was starting to consider what the new year could look like and what it could become in time. January is also when I generally start planning my garden, ordering any specialty seeds, drawing up garden plans. It’s a gardener tradition! So in many ways January is the “how will I grow” month, you know, just sitting under cozy blankets, tea in hand, plotting and scheming what I could do after the thaw.
One thing I had never done, until this year, was to create a vision board. But this year, my friend Jeanne invited me and just one other friend (and let me tell you the joy in “being picked” has not lessened after middle school in me!) over for a New Years Day retreat. She made us gorgeous silk velvet eye masks, filled with rice, and lavender she grew in her garden. We did a meditation and journaling process, sat outside in the sun enjoying her lasagna, and then got to the stacks and stacks of magazines in the living room by the fire. Jeanne told us to just wander through the magazines, and pull out of them whatever we were drawn to. To make a whole stack of images and inspiration, maybe thinking about what we wanted in our new year. Nothing super structured, not on a hunt for specific things. But to just flip through the pages and see what called to us. Then we got to arranging on our boards.
Mine of course, had plenty of flower pictures, and lots of the word artist. I do plan to grow lots and lots of flowers this year, but I also think it was just as much the thought of surrounding myself, cocooning myself, in beauty. After glueing down those that made the cut, I still had a nice little pile of options.
I didn’t want to just toss away what had called to me.
So I brought that little stack home, and did some more starter pages with them. Starter pages are just as the name suggests: a start to a page. maybe it’s a little bit of washi, or a few bits of paper, or even just one. A starter page has a little visual bit started on the page- they’re great for getting rid of that blank white page fear, and make me want to keep journaling to fill them up.
Your visual prompt this week: If you don’t have magazines at home, ask around to friends, or perhaps visit your local library and ask them if they have old magazines set to go to the recycle bin. Make sure there’s a variety of options- including magazines you wouldnt’ necessarily normally read. Look not just for words or images but also for colors that call to you. Then once you’ve got entirely too much to choose from, start arranging and see what ends up on the board. Maybe that “board” is just the front first spread of your journal, you know, the one you’ve been waiting to put something special in. For that matter it could just be the next empty two page spread.
Once you’ve got that glued down, you’ll have lovely bits that shouldn’t just be tossed away! Anything that doesn’t make it into the spread goes into starter pages. Maybe add a little washi tape or a bit of some other design element, but stick to a single thing you pulled out, that drew you, per spread.
Your writing prompt: Take some time to look at your vision board, and write a letter to a friend, “showing” them your vision board, and what you think it means to you. Through the next week, use those starter pages to write about what you are drawn to in those images, using the cutout as a prompt or what you want out of this year. State your desires. Dream big. Hold your plans loosely, with an open hand. Know that dreams and desires may not happen in the timing or the way we want them to– but that we can keep working towards them, with a willingness to flow as things change: right along with them we adjust and let go and keep holding on. Right along with those changes we can allow ourselves to see how much bigger and better sometimes those initial ideas end up coming into reality.
In this dreaming, planning, and preparing month, I’d like to kick off with encouraging you to create your own vision board. Because I don’t know about you, but my need for visions of a better future didn’t stop on January 1. And my need for beauty, in these last days, has only gotten stronger. Beauty as survival, visions and dreams as forward motion. We need it all these days, friends.
This week, you could also:
Catch up on Instagram: l’Artesania retreat center, the creative notebook, and me.
Plan a visit to L’Albi
Schedule a creative journaling workshop or plein air session with me
Missed a letter?
Last creative notebook letter:
And you can find all the creative notebook entries here.
You can also support my work by sharing with others. Thanks for reading all the way to the end!
Love all the starter pages and seeing those magazines living a new life in your journal!!
I also take the leftover bits and bobs for my vision boards and use them in my planners and journals.🙂Sometimes I have enough that I end up putting them in the back pocket to pull out later. It’s amazing what you can read in a vision board, especially if you make them every year. I have nine now. Glad you enjoyed it!