For this practice I used Paint Chip Poetry color cards along with my own collection of paint chips. For my paint chip collection, I’ve simply collected paint chips that appeal to me— color, the words on them— from various home improvement stores.
The intention of this creative activity is to identify three qualities of energies and represent them with colors. Using paint chips, both the boxed Paint Chip Poetry and a personal collection, adds a layer of words and phrases that can then be extracted from the colors to generate a poem:
Physically looking at, selecting, and placing paint chips adds a tactile and embodied element to this practice. Additionally, there is a self exploration and intuitive component in deciding which colors are reflective of one’s experience of the three different qualities of energy (described below). Using paint chips and then creating a poem concretizes inner experience in a creative way.
For all three circles, focus more on the color and not the words or phrases on the paint chips.
If you’d like to try this, first choose colors that represent your experience of a slow, calm, and grounding energy. This is the innermost circle.
For the circle surrounding this one, choose colors that represent your experience of a more active, alive, and in-motion energy.
For the final outermost circle choose colors that represent your experience of an anchoring and stabilizing energy that helps you shift between the energies represented in the other two circles, a kind of bridging energy.
If you like, take a photo of your paint chip creation.
Next, write the words in a poem format. The format you choose is up to you. I chose to take the words and write them in approximately the same place as the paint chips, forming three circles (see above image).
You can use these colors, your photo, the words, or any element of this process as needed when working with your different energies throughout the day. For example, choosing colors from the inner circle can help you feel more grounded, and/or you can use a word or phrase from the paint chips as a kind of mantra.