The 100 Day Project 2018

Every year around this time -- April -- thousands of people begin a project of their choosing to commit to for 100 consecutive days. Mostly, this challenge happens on Instagram where people are sharing their progress each day and showing support to others who are on the same journey. I've tried to participate in this project for three or maybe four years now and have never been able to complete it. I'm hoping this year will be different, but also allowing myself to fail miserably should that be the case. No self-pressure this time around. In fact, I've decided to keep this really super simple for myself. 

Keep reading to see what all the hype is about, to find out what I'm doing for my 100 days, and to see a few people I'm following because I love the project they've selected for themselves. 

A Little Background

Okay, so I'm not going to give you a long history lesson here. NOPE!! Instead, I'm going to just tell you that the idea of this project started with a class that was taught by Michael Bierut (the guy who designed Hilary Clinton's logo for her 2016 Presidential Campaign). One of his students, Elle Luna, conceived of the idea while in Michael's class and thus became this 5 year recurring project. 

You can read the real history of it HERE. 

I really love the quote that is used as a starting place for this project. It comes from one of my favorite poets -- Mary Oliver. 

My 2018 Project

For the last four years, I've tried several versions of this project. I can't remember the first one I tried to do, I think it was something like 100 tiny handmade books (crazy I know), but here's what my list looks like: 
<<>>The 100 Pens Project
<<>>The 100 Pens and Poems Project
<<>>100 Days of Symbol Study -- that was last year

This year, I'm giving myself permission to do the 100 Signs and Symbols again in a simpler way because signs and symbols are something I care about on a deeper level than just, "oh this is fun to do". I really do study symbols and find them fascinating when I start to look at the history and evolution of them. 

So this year, I'm making it simple. I tried in 2017 to put the symbols in a journal -- one page a day, draw the symbol, write about it, photograph it, and share it daily on IG. That was just too much. So this year as I was thinking about what to do and looking for ways to make it easy for myself, I came across this blog post by Belinda Fireman where she did a 365 days of self-love project and I was so inspired that I knew immediately what I wanted to do for this year's 100 days. 

 

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I'm using only a few supplies for this project in order to keep things really simple for myself. I will add some color down the road -- MAYBE -- but for the day to day of it, I'm only going to do pen and ink and I'm going to keep it to:

• one pencil -- the .5 Draft/Matic Mab Graves Pencil by Alvin -- this pencil is really tough to find because it was a limited edition
• one eraser -- the Caran D'Ache Technik Eraser
• one black permanent pen -- Ohto Graphic Liner in 02
• one fountain pen -- The Pilot Penmanship with Extra Fine nib filled with permanent black document ink by De Atramentis. 
• and most importantly, ONE SHEET OF PAPER every 30 days of the project

The only other thing that I must stress is that you have to give yourself permission to NOT post to Instagram every single day. This is one of the things I had to agree on in my soul -- that I was doing this for me, not for likes on IG. With that one declaration, I have been able to fill in my grid everyday. I photograph each day, but I didn't share on Saturday or Sunday!! YAY ME!!!

That's it. Simple. Easy.

Projects I'm Digging!!

I love following other creatives who are doing things that inspire me to stay the course. Sometimes I pick projects to follow that I wish I had time to do myself and then there are the projects that I follow because I'm just in awe of what they are doing because I could NEVER do them. Here are a few (click the images below : 

100 Days of Color Swatches by Carrie Chan -- A Perfect Something on Instagram

100 Days of Resisting by Tia Keo -- tiakeo.art on Instagram

100 Days of Angels by Tiare Smith -- iamclassygirl on Instagram

100 Days of Bouquets by loulei & lorra on Instagram

Are you participating in the #100DayProject?  If you are, please leave a comment below and tell me what hashtag you are using so I can find you. I would love to see what you're doing and how you're getting creative (or not) during this challenge. 

See you again soon with a cool free 7-day challenge I'm hosting all about signs and symbols :-).