Before we begin: If you’re not familiar with One Little Word be sure to check out Ali Edwards’ page about One Little Word. She invented this concept and has all the info you need to get sucked into the awesomeness started.

For the first time ever I have felt really compelled to choose a word to be my guiding word for the year. And after brainstorming, sleeping on it, changing my mind five times and sleeping on it some more I finally landed on practice as my One Little Word for 2018.

Why ‘Practice’?

I struggle a LOT with biting off more than I can chew. I struggle with wanting to skip to the next thing as soon as something becomes too challenging or too boring. So I wanted a word that expresses ambition as well as forgiveness and self-care.

To me practice means sticking to a thing and allowing yourself to be bad at it until you’re not. It means forgiving myself for not doing an A+ job at something but to keep going. It means committing to things (scary things) I’ve been putting off and accepting the outcome. Practice means getting to work but being gentle with yourself.

To be honest, this could easily be my guiding word for life, not just this year. It’s really spot on for me. I’m already practicing a bunch of things (like being more social, becoming healthier and keeping my messy house neater) and I’m excited to see in which other arenas of my life I can apply practice to.

Making the journal

I made a mini album that serves as a journal for me. Mostly I will just be writing my thoughts so I could have easily just used a regular notebook. BUT I wanted to give myself a chance to sort of meditate a little bit on the concept of practice. By giving myself an opportunity to create visuals in the journal too I invite myself to linger on the subject and do even more thoughtwork.

Painted a nice cover on my favorite Clairefontaine Paint-On paper pad. Excellent for art journaling. 👌 I used a ton of different mediums, including POSCA paint pens, watercolors and acrylic paints (different brands – some dollar store, some nicer).

I also went through my stash and grabbed a bunch of scraps and bits. Most are white and neutral (for more writing space) and some have pops of color. I want to keep this journal fresh and fun.

The album is A5 size but some of the pages are cut narrower for a fun layered look.

Finally, I cut the cover art in half to fit on the chipboard covers, glued them down and bound the whole thing using my trusty Bind-it-all.

Here’s a quick look at the blank pages. 😍

I’ve already started working in the journal – that’s a story for another day.

Words I considered

• Go
• Make
• Create
• Strive
• Focus
• Limitless (inspired by Amanda Rose Zampelli)
• Reach (inspired by Elise Cripe)

Do you have a guiding word for 2018?

xo Nina