I mentioned in early June that I had a “summer project” that I wasn’t ready to chat about yet. (I needed some time to see how it panned out.) Well, folks, I am six weeks in and it’s becoming some of my favorite creative work so I am ready to share.

I’m making “creative collages” for 100 days.

Here’s what happened: in May I started using the “collage” feature in Pinterest and I loved it. Truly the most satisfying thing I have found on my phone since NY Times introduced the Midi. I made a few collages using found images (shown below) and they were so inspiring. It felt like building a vision board and the interface was straight-forward and fun to use.

Then I built a collage using only my own images (shown on the left below). That was even more satisfying. The third week of May I made a collage that I called “what I made and grew in May.” It was fun but I realized quickly that I would have more to add by the end of the month.

So I thought…hmmm, what if I made a creative collage of my work every week? That seemed cool but what would really exciting is if I tried to make a creative collage of my work every day.

At this point it was almost June 1 and I am a person who loves a starting line, so I decided to begin the first day of June and take it the whole 100 days (so I’ll wrap on September 8). This timeframe covers peak summer which is when I tend to feel my most creative. The days are so long. The garden changes every six minutes. The colors are screaming. It’s my favorite time to be a crafter.

Not wanting to go through the whole process of uploading multiple images to Pinterest everyday and not wanting to take the whole thing public from the start, I downloaded the Canva app on my phone and computer. I am new to Canva but so far it’s doing everything I want. (I am paying $25/m for the business plan but I am not sure I need this high of a plan. All I know is it’s storing my excessive amount of images, working well, removing backgrounds for me quickly and I have hit no snags.)

On June 1st, I made my first collage featuring sunflowers, calendula, my marigold dye samples and our first big tomato. The green painted stripes in the top right were painted with watercolor on kraft paper and then photographed. I was off to a good start.

For the most part, I work on my phone (though sometimes I have tweaked and adjusted things at my laptop). Everything I use is a photo (so I don’t do any digital drawing). Any time you see a doodle, that was hand-drawn or painted on paper and then I took a photo of the sketch and worked it into the design.