After a few months of feeling unfocused and uninspired, I was in desperate need of something to get my mind back on track and help me focus on good things. So my friend Heather and I teamed up to host a Vision Board Party. A vision board is a collage of words and images that represent your goals – whatever you want to be, do or have in your life. It’s also a great excuse to hang out with your friends and get crafty!

Gather Your Vision Board Supplies:

1. Poster boards

2. Scissors

3. Glue

4. Magazines

I went to the Dollar Tree, where they had large white poster boards priced at just 50 cents! These are a good size as-is, but large enough to be cut in half for smaller boards. Vision boards can be any size! The dollar store is also a good place to pick up extra glue and scissors if needed. I recommend using glue sticks for this project over squeeze glue.

Make sure to plan your Vision Board Party early enough so you can tell your guests to save their magazines and catalogs for a month or two. Everyone gets to clean out their magazine rack and bring things to cut up and share. The magazines can be any type! You never know where you’ll find the perfect pictures for your “vision.” In addition to magazines, I also set out markers and sticky notes in case anyone had an inspiring phrase they wanted to add, or a personal doodle.

 Invite the Right People

This is not a gathering for skeptics. Keep the overall vibe positive by making the invite list small and limited to people who are into the idea. Cutting and pasting your goals on posters may sound a little silly to some people, and that’s OK. They can stay home and keep their magazines all to themselves. You want a fun, supportive and enthusiastic atmosphere.

When creating your invite list, consider your space as well. Our goal was to keep the number around 10, so that everyone would have plenty of space to work on their boards without it being too crowded. I always tend to over-invite because there’s always last minute cancellations. We invited about 15 people and the final number was five.

Cut, Paste, Party and Create

We invited guests to bring their drink of choice, set out some snacks, did a quick overview of what a vision board was and then jumped right in tearing through magazines. It reminded me of one of my favorite art activities in grade school – collage day where we’d get to rip pictures out of magazines and create anything we wanted.

There’s no right or wrong way to do a vision board. It’s your own vision for the future. You can use scissors and be precise, or you can tear out your pictures and keep the rough edges. Some people went with mostly photos, where others focused on inspiring words or phrases. It can cover all the poster board or be individual images. The main goal here is for you to have something to look at when you need a reminder of where you are trying to go in life. Maybe there’s a destination you’d like to travel to, or a dream job, or even a personal trait like confidence. Put anything that inspires you on your board.