Joy Experiments in July

I'm running another creative challenge and I want you to join me!

In May, I gave myself a tiny dare: make one small thing every day, just to see what happened. It turned into a inspiring, creative outlet and attracted lots of lovely Substackers into my feed.

So I’m doing it again — and this time, I want you in.

Joy Experiments in July is a daily creative challenge: one collage a day, in your sketchbook, for the whole month. That’s it. No rules about being “good.” No pressure to share. Just fifteen or twenty minutes of cutting, sticking, and seeing what shows up on the page.

Fifteen minutes. That’s the whole ask. Do it with your morning coffee or while dinner’s in the oven.

In May, I ran a version of this with a stamp + punch technique and had more fun than I’d had in ages… the loose, playful, no-stakes kind of fun we forget to make time for as adults. July’s is even simpler. Pretty, easy, small. A creative practice that fits into a real life.

A little on why I love this: I’ve spent years teaching people how to make vision boards — over three thousand of them and counting — and I’ve talked about it on NBC News twice.

What I keep coming back to is that the magic isn’t in the finished thing. It’s in the fifteen minutes you give yourself. The collage is just the excuse.

Here’s how to join:

• Subscribe so you don’t miss the daily prompts and details. Everything lands right here

• Grab a sketchbook, a glue stick, and a stack of anything you can cut up (magazines, packaging, old cards)

• Show up for July, one small page at a time

I’ll be sharing prompts, my own pages, and a few gentle nudges to keep you going all month.

Hit subscribe and let’s make something joyful together.