Sonya Cheney

Writer. Witch. Creatrix.

one little word 2021 | february vision board

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I’m pretty sure the vision board is one of my favorite parts of One Little Word. I love the tactile nature of sitting and flipping through magazines, cutting and pasting the images down. It’s one of those activities that I don’t do often, but when I do, I berate myself for forgetting how much I enjoy it.

As I worked this time around, I tried to remember my word–CULTIVATE–and choose the images and words that reminded me of the word and what I’m hoping to get out of it. Most specifically I included images to emphasize a cozy home; my growing witchcraft practice; slow, mindful living; self love + self care; and of course my literal garden that I’ll be officially starting this weekend.

I’m always saying that I’m a visual learner/person, so this activity is always relevant to my interests. I go through phases of binge-making Pinterest boards, deleting and re-curating certain themed boards. It’s nice not only to do a real world version, but also to pick through all of the relevant Pinterest boards and print out a few photos that were perfect to include. Basically it was a whole lot of dorky fun for me.

one little word 2021 | cultivate

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I started planning my garden in September. Part of it was wanting to make sure I was ahead of the game, but most of it was pure enthusiasm. I couldn’t wait to get started, so I just did. Since then, my crafty brain has basically been split into three parts: knitting, scrapbooking, and gardening. Now that it’s January, scrapbooking and gardening seem to be finding their way into each other’s territory because my One Little Word for the year has shown itself to be cultivate.

If you don’t know, One Little Word is a project (with optional course) run by scrapbook maven Ali Edwards. The concept of a word for the year isn’t specifically hers, but she’s made it one of her major annual projects, and it’s kind of a big deal. I signed up for the course in 2020 (word: “enough”) and, unsurprisingly, it was just not my year to find the time and effort to focus on the prompts and project like I had intended. Now, though, I’m at a place of comfort and stability as far as living space and daily routine go, and it feels like something I can throw myself into as much as I would like.

With plants constantly on the brain lately, the word “cultivate” came to mind while I was making a list of possible words late at night (read: 8pm) in bed back in November. “Bloom” and “grow” also showed up, and they feel like they could be companions to Cultivate, but it’s that notion of working something with intention that drew me in and helped me realize that this is my year of cultivation. I love that the word is applicable to so many areas of life, from something as literal as the vegetable garden I’ve been planning for months to more abstract like a daily routine that benefits my heart and soul rather than being an act of going through the motions.

For the project, I’m feeling drawn to more florals and greenery in my binder, and I’ve been enamored with the 3×8 albums of late. When I was originally ordering my December Daily album, I couldn’t decide between the 6×8 “Merry” and the 3×8 green linen so–ah–I ordered both. *blushes* But that worked out perfectly once I ultimately chose to use the 6×8 for December Daily. When Cultivate came to me shortly after, I knew it was meant for the green linen album.

I’m also using the OLW 2019 digital kit because even though I got the 2021 digital kit when I signed up for the course, I just love the typewriter font from 2019. Other than the digital kit, though, I’m being a little haphazard with my products and picking through whatever fits my main motifs and colors: florals/botanicals, hearts, and tags (I do love a good tag), plus pinks, greens, and yellows. I also adore the black and white neutrals that Ali uses in the main kits each year; I appreciate something akin to a blank canvas to build off of.

I spent January bursting with enthusiasm, and it’s helped me to keep my word visible so far. How the rest of the year goes, only time will tell. But for now, I’m enjoying getting to know Cultivate.

Do you have a word for 2021?

december daily 2020 | highlights and reflections.

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And so ends 2020, the year that we thought never would, and with it the major holiday season and by extension, December Daily.

This was my first year with the project, and it was by far my biggest scrapbooking endeavor to date. I still consider myself a newbie scrapbooker, and I was hesitant, overwhelmed, and inspired all at once over the possibilities. I was excited enough that I did a fair bit of planning ahead of time, but even that didn’t prepare me for the actual experience. It was…something. I was more flexible with myself during this project than probably any other I’ve done in a long while, and that was surely to my benefit on the days that I didn’t feel like working on it, either because I didn’t have a story to tell that day, or I just preferred watching a movie with Dan in the evening.

The majority of my stories are most likely not chronological and instead shared at any point in the month just to say, “This is relevant to this month, even if not to this day specifically.” I put ten things I was loving on the tenth because it was a fun and flexible way to make an entry without having to stay on top of it; I didn’t have to do the page all at once (which is great, because it was kind of intense). I have an insert of my current favorite holiday movies–and I didn’t watch a single one of them. But they were still my favorites! So I counted it.

Since this was my first December Daily, I wanted it to be as low pressure as possible, and I think I accomplished that. The fact that I finished before January really began also feels like another marker of success. As I move on to other projects this year (specifically, One Little Word, Book of Me, and whatever my not-quite-Project Life should be called), I won’t have an unfinished December Daily looming over me.

I already have some thoughts as far as my 2021 December Daily goes, and I’m trying to note them down so I don’t forget by the time December comes along again. I know I want to be even broader with my embellishments–less Christmas specific–and I’d love to try out a Life Crafted album for it. Hell–maybe I won’t even do December Daily per se. Maybe it’ll feel like something else entirely by the end of the year. I don’t know. I’m excited to see how it evolves when I start really thinking about it again, though.

Here are a few of my favorite spreads and pages within the project this past December:

finding my footing in hybrid scrapbooking.

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Target dollar spot glitter; an old Ali Edwards journaling card; handmade mini envelopes

I love crafts. It’s a blanket statement because I tend to bounce around from one thing to another: knitting, quilting, cross stitch, and, most recently, watercolor. I love having options when it comes to expressing my creativity and personality, and sometimes I just want the challenge of something new or less frequently tried. But–I also still adore my computer.

I feel like I’ve always been a computer person. When I was in elementary school and they started putting them in classrooms, I was hooked. I had a VTech personal learning computer when I was small. And some of my closest friendships have been made using the internet. Between, oh, 2006 and–um–last September I would be online until all hours of the night, sometimes watching YouTube, sometimes chatting with friends, sometimes just frying my brain. It’s part of why I love blogging so much, and why I love playing around in Photoshop and InDesign. There’s just something about the keys clacking and the cursor moving across the screen that gives me a dopamine kick.

Last year was the first time I started a scrapbooking project with Finn’s baby book (which I still have two or three months to finish within, but let’s not focus on that right now), and since then I’ve been inundating myself with options, styles, and inspiration. I’ve joined the Awesome Ladies Project and discovered this whole new world of creativity. And now? I’m doing December Daily for the first time. I started thinking about it in September, if not even earlier, and since then I’ve been hemming and hawing over how I want to do it. Fully digital and printed into a Blurb book? Pocket pages like Finn’s baby book? For a while I was set on the idea of just getting a spiral bound mixed media pad and assembling the whole thing within that. I really thought that was going to be the winner. But then, none of these options quite seemed to fit. I loved it all but it didn’t make me as excited as the final answer seems to be doing.

an Ali Edwards 6×8 album; a watercolor wreath I painted; more mini envelopes

That answer?

Hybrid scrapbooking.

I love kits. I love ordering kits and subscribing to kits, but I also know that I don’t always use all of the elements within them. Over the last few smaller projects I’ve worked on (an Art of Noticing book for the month of September and a Halloween/horror movie book for October), I’ve realized what kit pieces I like to use physically and which I can be happy to use in digital form. I’m not a big journaling card user, for example, but I love chip boards, die cuts, and papers. I love the texture and dimension that can come with adding ephemera to a page. I’m also a huge fan of physical stamping; I enjoy a good messy stamped background. If it’s not crisp and clean, I just think that adds character.

With a digital kit, I can include (and even print, cut, and attach) the elements and ephemera I want in a layout without worrying about wasting other pieces that I just don’t love. And can we talk about the typewriter fonts that you can get when typing journaling on the computer? How did I not think of that sooner when I was doing it for years in my zines?

I know; my lack of awareness is mind blowing.

a wood veneer from Elle’s studio; a set of dollar spot gift tags from Target

To say I’ve been obsessing over my December Daily would be an understatement, but to finally realize the best way to make it work for me feels like a nerdy game changer. I am still entirely new to this craft and creative outlet, but the fact that I can use it to combine so many other things that I love–let’s circle back to that recent watercolor endeavor–is just wonderful.

What kinds of crafts do you love? Do you scrapbook? How do you prefer to do your storytelling and memory keeping?