Try a New Way to Journal or Capture Your Favorite Moments

Life is short and summers unfortunately are that much shorter! But with a few photos and a pair of scissors, you can create a memorable collage of all your best memories from the season.  

I've always loved doing collages for fun, or "mood boards" as they're called in my brand marketing work....it's the same exercise either way:  curating your favorite, most representative images and putting them into a visual narrative that tells the story you want. Thankfully my kids have adopted this habit too & now create beautiful collages as birthday gifts! Here's the view from my desk, Haley's above the lamp, Avery's to the right, and mine to the left....fills me with energy every time I look at them:

Here is my daughter Haley's collage up close -- I love the pink palette here, very "her."

My older daughter Avery is a Pinterest pro & accomplished artist, who will be studying art more next year at college -- just 30 minutes from Portland ME, where we are dying to visit Winslow Homer's studio together!

One of my favorite interior designers, Charlotte Moss, is a veteran collage-maker as well. Her leather-bound magazine collections are legendary but her penchant for scrapbooking and collage art maybe a little less well known... If you need any inspiration, I highly recommend her book Charlotte Moss: A Visual Life. The book takes you through her creative process, how she brainstorms and marinates some of her best design ideas and travel momentos, distilling the essence of them into rich collages like these:

Photos courtesy of Charlotte Moss

FYI -- It really doesn't matter what the SOURCE of your images is - whether magazine clippings, photos, matchbooks or a sprig of wildflowers....the main thing is to just pull together some visual items that serve as good reference points for what you want to capture.

My mom was a big decoupage devotee and we always thought it would be fun to decorate a store-bought breakfast tray with an inset collage of these kinds of images, popped under glass. Would be an amazing hostess thank you gift, wouldn't it! Ahhh, so many ideas, so little time...SOME DAY.

If you are feeling intimidated (don't be!:) or just don't have the time, why not lean on some short-cuts to get the same effect?? Here are some great selects from Minted, below. If you go this route, don't forget to throw in a few NON-people photos too -- a close-up of the tablescape at a beautiful cafe you visited, a big pile of orange life preservers stacked in a boathouse, or the flowers that you picked on a hike. Those little visual details are amazing triggers to put you right back to a specific time and place that you want to savor -- I promise!!

Hope you all had a great Memorial Day weekend and cheers to a wonderful summer filled with beautiful memories (and collages to capture it all)!!

Minted Heart - Minted Circle - Minted State - Charlotte Moss Book