Setting Your Intention with an Inspiration Board

The first vision board that Mark and I made together.

When I was at Design*Sponge, we made a lot of vision boards. We even convinced a group of friends to spend our girls weekend away, making boards.

When Mark and I started dating, we made a vision board together. When I look at it now, I’m amazing at how much of it came true. The table in the middle looks like the tables at our outdoor wedding, and we’ve been to many of the places pictured on the board: Uganda, Italy, Japan. There’s something kind of special about making these boards. Something that helps you get clarity about what you want to do.

Here are the rules.
1. Go through all the magazines you can get your hands on and cut out any words or images that speak to you. Don’t analyze it too much, just go with you your gut. If you like it, cut it.
2. Be intentional in how you lay it out. Arrange the images and words in a way that makes sense to you.

(Grace also went through her process on Design*Sponge) When we did this on our girls’ weekend many years ago, we were all amazed at how different all of the board looked even though we were using the same magazines.

I had to drag the board out from my office into the living room to get good photo (it does not live in front of my books)

A couple of years ago, my stepdaughter mentioned that she really wanted a giant bulletin board to tack up photos of her friends. So for her birthday that year, I went to the lumberyard and bought the biggest piece of MDF that would fit into my car and spent an afternoon covering it with white fabric from Michael’s. After initially pinning a couple dozen of photos, the board languished. (Although, infuriatingly, she did tack up a bunch of things on the wall right next to the nearly empty board) When her living situation changed dictating that she spend less time here but the board remained. I decided to reclaim it and give it some love.

I spent a couple of weeks flipping through magazines to create this board. (I even tore pages out of my beloved World of Interiors.) There is a decidedly Italian bent to the images that I chose. We’re planning on taking Stella next fall and building her connection with the country so I’m sure that was in my mind as I cut. I’d like to take her to Africa one day so safari animals are a nod to that dream. But I also pulled Irish castles, Machu Picchu and a gray sea filled with seals. There are mirrors and urns and flatware. Random aristocratic portraits. Horses. I’m not sure how it will all manifest. I’ll have to wait.