Stickers!

As I was preparing for my five-day workshop at Hudson River Valley Art Workshops, I thought it would be fun to create some kind of "marker" for each day. I love check lists, passport stamps, and gold stars so I decided to make a sticker to give the attendees each day.

I started by creating five small art quilt collages that could be nicely cropped into circles. I used a 4" circle cut from a piece of paper to help me visualize the size and shape as I worked. We'd be talking a lot about personal symbols during the workshops, so each design includes one of the symbols I use regularly in my work.



Here are the five finished collages.


Next, I took photos of each and imported them into Canva, a free online graphic design platform. That allowed me to crop them into circles and add some text. I was sort of planning to include text, so I had left some space in each collage where I could drop the text. Some ended up more easily accommodating the text than others.

Finding the quotes was tricky. They needed to be short. They needed to fit the meaning of the symbol. I didn't want them all to be quotes from white dudes. During the week before my workshop when I had a lot of planning and packing to do, I probably spent too much time searching for just the right quotes. (It was worth it.)

Monday's quote reminded us to explore every possibility during the week.



Tuesday's quote is one of my favorites -- and reminds us to celebrate complexities... in the creative process and in ourselves.



For Wednesday, I chose a quote that would encourage us to keep going!


On Thursday, the quote suggests that taking a moment to reflect is important.


On Friday, we began to think about returning to our homes and the places in a creative life where we are most fulfilled.


These Canva images were also perfect for posting on Instagram, which I did each day of the workshop.

I picked up a pack of Avery sticker labels to print on my home printer. These are the ones I used.


The Avery website provides downloadable templates for all their labels, making it easy to import the image and get it sized and placed just right to fit on the sticker page. Finished stickers.



We kept all our exercises, handouts and worksheets in a plastic binder through the week. Here's my binder on Friday.



This was such a fun project! The students seemed to get a kick out of them too. I hope to have more opportunities to teach multi-day workshops and will definitely print up more stickers for the occasion!