How These Monthly Boards Began
I’ve always loved fashion. Growing up, one of my happiest places was the children’s section of Barnes & Noble, surrounded by no fewer than twelve fashion magazines. I’d flip through the pages studying silhouettes, textures, and those little lines of copy that made something click.
Eventually, I started collecting those moments. I’d tear out my favorite looks, quotes, and bits of inspiration, arrange them on a poster board, glue them down one by one, and hang the finished piece on my wall. I wasn’t making a new board every month back then (I was far too busy being an angsty teen, doing homework, and pretending to study for the ACT). But seasonally? Absolutely.
When I got to college and the world became more digital, so did my creative process. Between writing for CollegeFashionista, scrolling for outfit inspiration, and avoiding homework, I started saving images from my favorite sites and building monthly mood boards on my laptop. Eventually, they became the background on all my devices.
What started as a fashion-inspiration ritual slowly became something deeper: a way of checking in with myself.
I realized each board was a snapshot of my emotional landscape from the month before — what I was craving, grieving, dreaming about, or growing through.
Every new board became a ritual of reflection and intention, a way to honor the past while imagining the future.
Over time, those boards shifted from simple style curation into full-blown manifestation tools:
A visual journal of who I was becoming.
A roadmap for what I wanted next.
A reminder of what mattered most in each season of my life.
More than ten years later, I’m still making them — now with even more clarity, purpose, and joy. I feel incredibly lucky. Lucky that I stayed consistent. Lucky that I made space for creativity long before I knew how much I’d need it. Lucky that this practice, born from fashion magazines and procrastination, has helped so many of my dreams come true.
My monthly mood boards are still all of that: part fashion, part therapy, part manifestation, part monthly reset.
And I love them more now than ever.