Creative process Archives

Unraveling Courage

January 18, 2025 by Heather Filed Under: Creative process, Inspiration & Education, Planning & Goals, Productivity, Wellness & Mindset 2 Comments

Happy 2025! I have been unraveling words over the past few weeks. These days, when greeting people right after New Year, I find it’s not uncommon to exchange “words.” Selecting a word for the year (WOTY) or One Little Word (OLW-Ali Edwards) has become common practice! Susannah Conway (a photographer and creative soulmate) offers a free workbook and workshops. Many others are offering community support to establish or continue this practice. I began this practice in 2011, a year with much uncertainty. I had left my corporate career as a textile designer feeling insecure and excited about my future. I began by setting an intention for my year by selecting a word; that year, I needed clarity. By the end of the year, I had launched my business, firmly stepped away from my corporate career, and permitted myself to transform as things came into focus. The results of selecting a word were powerful, and the practice has stayed with me all these years!

My previous words over the past DECADE of selecting a WOTY.

2011: CLARITY
2012: SOAR
2013: RADIANT
2014: PLAY
2015: CHOICE
2016: HARMONY
2017: ACCEPTANCE
2018: FEARLESS
2019: INTENTION
2020: INTEGRATION
2021: POSSIBILITY
2022: HOPE
2023: DELIGHT
2024: COMPASSION

I love how they connect and flow into one another.

My word for 2025 is COURAGE.

With so many intense things happening in America and the world, from politics to natural disasters, it already feels fitting. Everything feels like a big tangled ball of scary unknown outcomes (that’s life, right?!). Unraveling courage of those messy feelings is what the process feels like for me. We can all use a little (or a lot) courage to help us navigate life’s challenges. My method of selecting a word for the year combines reflecting on the past year’s lessons and what I’ve taken away from my previous year’s words.

Word Cloud of Courage and its synonyms created with Scapple.

Last year, compassion (for self and others) taught me how to surrender, open my heart as a lifelong practice, and act in a manner that includes kindness and healthy boundaries. I went into the year feeling like I was not always very compassionate. My work with compassion is not done. Each year, when I focus on a word, I begin a lifelong exploration of my relationship to that feeling, emotion, or action. There have been times when I felt ashamed for not being more compassionate towards myself or someone else. Sometimes, it’s a conflicting choice, and it can feel like you are turning your back on another person to act compassionately towards yourself. I believe that ultimately when we learn to treat ourselves with compassion, we can better give that compassion back as a gift to others. As I reflected on these lessons, courage emerged as my word, primarily because it’s how I want to feel and act. There is a lot of fear out there right now, and I do not want to live in fear. Facing our fears takes courage. Choosing to turn toward what frightens me feels vitally important. As you can see below in the word cloud, looking at the synonyms helps me understand if a word is right for me.

In 2018, my word was Fearless or an absence of fear. Courage is slightly different. The implications are that we act despite our fears, facing them head-on. Despite our worries, facing something we are afraid of requires vulnerability; it may require asking for help, stepping outside our comfort zone, collaborating with others, and being brave and adventurous. Some acts of courage require us to stretch our boundaries, expand our horizons, and push the limits of what we think we can do. I’m starting by tackling a few tasks that I’ve put on hold or been procrastinating on that have to do with disaster and legacy planning (it’s never too early to begin planning for what ifs and absolutelys).

I’m ready for some of that! I’m feeling the need (as I mentioned above) for courage in my personal life, how I interact within the community, and in my business (as I step more boldly into my role as an appraiser). I use a vision board to mind map and visualize what courage might look life in my own life. It reflects actions, feelings, and how I imagine bringing my word into my daily life. On the vision board above, courage looks fun and playful, not like a scary monster. That is how I’m approaching courage in 2025. I would love your thoughts on the Word of the Year (WOTY) process. Please comment on this post to let me know your word (s).

Discovering Delight

January 3, 2023 by Heather Filed Under: Creative process, Inspiration & Education, Planning & Goals, Productivity, Uncategorized, Wellness & Mindset 4 Comments

Happy 2023! These days, when greeting people right after New Year, I find it’s not uncommon to exchange “words.” Selecting a word for the year (WOTY) has become common practice! It was a year that began with a lot of uncertainty. I had left my long-term corporate career as a textile designer, and though I was finding my way, I was still far from confident in my future. I began setting an intention for my year by selecting a word; that year, I needed clarity. By the end of the year, I had launched my business, firmly stepped away from my corporate career, and permitted myself to be with unknowing as things came into focus. The results of selecting a word was powerful, and the practice has stayed with me.

In 2022, I began the year needing HOPE. Strangely, I selected the word before things started to get crazy in our lives. I just figured that after two years of being worn down by the pandemic and grad school, I needed hope.

I needed to be in a mind state of hope.

I needed to act in hope.

I learned to live in a state of hope, to remember to be hopeful, and to take actions that lead to hopeful outcomes!

HOPE became a practice.

As I reflected on my capacity to carry hope with me, I realized that I wanted more. I wanted something more expansive, light, and inspiring. I thought about the word inspiration and realized that I was trying to get deeper to our source of inspiration and oftentimes, that is what delights us.

I want to live in Delight!

Having my 4-year-old nephew with me over the holidays was a wonderful reminder that the delight children live with (much of the time). I asked myself if I could just recapture some of that every day.

Yes, I believe I can live in delight! It’s a practice and my intention for 2023. I will spend the next year playing with, noticing, cultivating, discovering, and pursuing what is a delight.

Delight is everywhere! It’s a matter of noticing and finding gratitude for what is delightful.

Reflecting on the past DECADE of my practice of selecting a WOTY, here are some of my previous words. I love how they connect and flow into one another.

2011: CLARITY
2012: SOAR
2013: RADIANT
2014: PLAY
2015: CHOICE
2016: HARMONY
2017: ACCEPTANCE
2018: FEARLESS
2019: INTENTION
2020: INTEGRATION
2021: POSSIBILITY
2022: HOPE
2023: DELIGHT

Word Cloud Created with Thinkmap: https://www.visualthesaurus.com/

I would love to hear your thoughts on the word of the year process (WOTY). Hit reply and let me know your word (s).

2022-HOPE for what is possible

January 3, 2022 by Heather Filed Under: Creative process, Inspiration & Education, Planning & Goals, Productivity, Uncategorized, Wellness & Mindset Leave a Comment

The beginning of a new year fills me with HOPE for what is possible.

My word for 2021 was Possibility. In 2021, possibility felt like an opening, and an invitation to release my grip on expectations. There is no failure, there is only what is possible!

Not everything I envisioned came to be, but I was conscious that I had and have a choice to pursue or release whatever possibilities come across my path.

Possibilities are limitless.
Possibilities are an invitation.
Possibilities are the seed of the future.

2022: HOPE

Hope is one of the three ethical Christian virtues, along with faith and charity. Although this is not what drew me to the word, my choice for hope is an expansion of the possibilities of 2021. Hope is related to faith, and trust. It may for some, require those qualities, yet it is an expectation.

With hope, I envision something better-I give myself permission to dream again, to invite, to anticipate, to DESIRE.

Hope is a Promise and an Invitation, an Outlook, and a State of Mind.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the word of the year process (WOTY). Hit reply and let me know your word (s)?

Got a Vision?

December 16, 2020 by Heather Filed Under: Art & Design, Creative process, Inspiration & Education, Planning & Goals, Productivity, Wellness & Mindset Leave a Comment

It’s been a challenging year and allowing ourselves to plan for the future still doesn’t quite feel natural. So for those of us use to planning, this state of uncertainty feels uncomfortable and possibly even scary. Yet, there are a lot of different ways to plan for the unknown. One way is to envision where you are headed. This type of planning is less rigid than sitting down with a calendar and deciding on goals, penciling in when you want to achieve them, and mapping out how to get there. A vision board is a wholly different kind of map.

Over the past five years, I’ve led quite a few vision board workshops at conferences, meetings, and art studio’s, one thing they always have in common, they are so much fun and unexpectedly powerful! Everyone from Oprah and Ellen to life coaches and artists uses vision boards as a creative tool to help gain clarity on setting intentions and goals. Have you created a vision board before?

When I create a vision board and lead a workshop I begin with helping you get clear about what you want to see happen in your life. Our imagination gets lazy and when that happens we sell our-self short of amazing possibilities! Imagine bigger, brighter, easier outcomes that are more joyful! Imagination is a muscle that requires regular exercise.

Think of making a vision board as a fun workout for your imagination!

The process of creating a vision board is a powerful tool for setting our intention and creatively visualizing that outcome. For some of us, these might be “goals.” For others, it might be an “intention” or a “feeling.” Through words and images, we can map our vision. This process helps us find clarity about what we are creating in our day-to-day lives through the choices we make. Our vision boards become a powerful touchstone to bring us back to our intentions when we feel we are off course or unclear.

When we get stuck or overwhelmed in the process of working through change in our lives, it can be refreshing to get out of our thinking mind and into our creative body. By asking ourselves what we want things to look like and how we want to feel, we embrace and tap into our creative connection with the universe, god, whatever that might mean to each of us.

So I am offering an online vision board workshop on Sunday, December 27th from 1-5 pm EST. It’s a pay what you can and I am inviting the first 12 people who sign up (here) to join me. If you can pay something (suggested $26), great but it’s not required. I want to see more powerful positivity manifested in 2021, this is my small contribution.

Even if you can’t join this time, I will offer the workshop again online soon. For those of you who want to do this on your own, the following instructions will get you going!

STEP 1: Gather : Flip through magazines and cut images and words that “speak to you”. Collect anything that delights or calls to you and have fun with the process.

STEP 2: Sort : If you run out of magazines or feel like you have “enough” begin to sort through setting things aside into three piles:

KEEP/LOVE!-These images and words feel right, bring you joy, you feel connected and they make your “heart sing”- trust your intuition.

MAYBE-These have an element that has attracted you but don’t quite excite you as others.

DISCARD- on second thought, something doesn’t feel quite right about these, it’s okay to put them away for later.

STEP 3: Arrange : Group images and words together as you begin to place them on your board. As you do this, you’ll get a sense of how the board should be laid out. You can follow a more aesthetic look or go about this in a random manner, there’s no right or wrong!

STEP 4: Attach : After you’ve arranged all the items in a way that works for you, paste everything onto the board. Take your time, attach smaller pieces to larger, think in layers.

STEP 5: Display : Hang your Vision Board in a prominent place where you’ll see it regularly, like the laundry room a closet, or inside a door.

The vision board process can help us find clarity and communicate our ideas in an effortless and creative way by tapping into our intentiohns, dreams, and envisioning them. The process doesn’t have to be exact or precise to work either! We can manifest how we want to feel, where we want to live or what we want our days to include. Vision boards can work in many areas of our life. I keep a small sketchbook that I create two-page spreads based on categories I dream about such as love relationships, home, travel (on hold for now;) and more.

Please give this a try and share your results with me if you like! Email me photo’s of your vision board or share via social media with #hkpscreativevisioning

Pursuing My Life’s Work

March 16, 2020 by Heather Filed Under: Art, Art & Design, Creative process, Inspiration & Education, Uncategorized 3 Comments

In pursuing my MA, I’ve come to understand that the work I am doing is my life’s work! It’s exciting to be in a place and time when you realize that all paths have led you to this moment, with the perfect experiences and guidance that will help you pursue your vision and dream. That is genuinely how I feel about this process, and I want to share the blurb that was included in a recent school newsletter, highlighting myself and one of my cohorts. Since I am only 1 1/2 semesters into my master’s, I don’t yet have my thesis declared, but think of it like this diagram: a three-legged stool, with my research focused on each of the ‘legs’.

My research stems from observing and interacting with artists as they craft a space known as the studio. In this space, the work of making crafted objects takes place through a universal and personal creative cycle of order and chaos. History and contemporary culture have much to say about the mess and order of the creative process. Having spent nearly ten years evaluating and co-producing these spaces to identify and construct systems that support organization of material culture and productivity, my curiosity led me to interview over fifty artists about how they construct these spaces, their habitus, their process of setting up their studio and their interaction with objects and materials in their space.

I am curious to learn more about the legacy of objects and spaces left behind by artists. How can individuals and institutions support craftspeople in establishing helpful working guidelines for maintaining legacies of material knowledge and material culture? By drawing upon research in the domestic and workspace design fields, I hope to gain a better understanding of how our identities are defined by the spaces we craft, in both domestic and public artists’ studios.

All lanes have converged, leading me to this moment, of understanding my life’s work through space, materials, people, memories, and craft making.