Dream boards or vision boards have becoming increasingly popular over the last few years. People use them to visualize their goals, dreams, and hopes for the future. Life coaches, including the brilliant Martha Beck, encourage clients to create dream boards to help them bring their goals to life. Artists can create a dream board to help them define and visualize their artistic goals.

A dream board can be made out of anything: piece of craft paper, foam board, index card, or piece of watercolor paper. Basically anything you have on hand works perfectly. Determine the size and shape you want to make your vision board and go for it. Next gather a bunch of magazines, catalogues, images printed from your computer, a pair of scissors, and a glue stick. I recommend a good glue stick because you want your images to stay "stuck". You can add stickers, glitter, fibers, or other embellishments later if you choose.

Next take a few minutes and jot down your artistic dreams. This can be anything from improving your drawing skills, to creating an art journal, to having your work published in a magazine, to building a store on etsy and quitting your day job. It can be anything you imagine for your artistic-self. Don't get lost in this part of the process. Give yourself a time limit to write down your goals. You can make additional boards as your goals are reached and new goals are added.

Now begin pulling out images and words from your magazines and computer printouts that match your goals. Once you have a good size stack of images began arranging them on your board. Go with what feels good to you. If you pulled an image that you love but it doesn't look or feel right to you, set it aside for another project. You want to stick with the images that make you happy. Once you have a composition that pleases you, began gluing the images and words to your board. Really make sure your images are glued down. You want your dreams to stick! Add embellishments to suit.

Allow your board to dry completely then find a spot to hang your board where you will see it everyday. Seeing your dreams on display daily will help move you toward your goals and motivate you to take the steps necessary to make your vision your reality.

Dream boards are a great tool for helping define your goals and they are fun to create. This is a project you can do with kids (adults may need to supervise the scissors) and I've even had success doing this project with teens and tweens.

Tips:

If you have multiple artist goals you may want to use a larger board or do several smaller dream boards, one for each goal.

Dream boards can be created once a month, once a year, or once per project. The number is really up to you.

Don't get lost trying to find the perfect image to match your goal. Relax and have fun with this project. You can always add more images later or create a whole new board.

Take a digital photo or scan your vision board into your computer and make it your screen saver.

Make your vision board an artist play day by inviting over some friends and make the boards together (ask everyone to bring over extra magazines, images, and poster-board to share)

Follow your intuition when choosing images. Pick what makes your heart happy.

Happy Creating
Maribeth Lysen
Painting Editor