Cards for a Cause

I created a special dachshund card for this Christmas season - the percentage I would earn from the sale of the card will be donated to the MidWest Dachshund Rescue. They are a great organization, we've adopted our dogs from them. Lanie and Morgan are sporting their pretty sweaters from WienerWraps, they donate 100% of the sale of the sweaters to MWDR.

2012 Card Designs for Ruva Cards

Here are some brand new designs, by yours truly, for RuvaCards for this holiday season. A few of my favorites, each one of these has at least one other color variation. Click on the images to check them out on the site. RuvaCards is a great Wisconsin small business, we do have some other designers out of the state, but our printing is done here in Wisco. So please support our small & local business this year if you can!

 I'm hoping to get some New Years cards designed soon as well. Visit my page for even more designs. All my cards come with back as well, some are even customizable. Enjoy!

Duke Poster

I had the pleasure of working on this little project last week. It's been a long time since I've had the chance to create a music poster, so I was pretty excited about the whole thing. Really happy with how it turned out overall. Yay for having train friends who need a graphic designer every now and then. For those of you in the Milwaukee area check out the event site for more information!

Soon to come NEW card designs, the new ruvacards site is almost ready!

Introducing White Rabbit Cards: Mother's Day Card for Procrastinators

I am notorious for not being on top of holidays, birthdays, and other occasions that at least call for a simple greeting card. As of late I've been designing simple easy to print at home cards, for occasions such as this. So in honor of mother's day, inspired by the awesome lady that is my mom, I designed this card. It incorporates the color purple in hopes that the lilac's will bloom soon.

If you need a card in a hurry that's not over sentimental and sappy please download the card and print it for the mom in your life.

The pdf has two sizes for the card both sizes can be printed on 8.5"x11" (letter) paper - if you don't have cardstock or aren't too keen on double sided printing use the first page to create a finished card of 4.25"x5.5". Fold in half horizontally and then fold in half vertically. The last two pages of the pdf are for half fold cards, so you would need to print on card stock or a heavier stock paper front to back and fold in half.

Here is an envelope template for the 5.5 x 4.5 card if you need to mail it or want an envelope. I tend seek out coordinating magazine pages in place of regular paper, because that's how I roll.

I hope to get a little online shop set up soon showcasing more print at home cards. Some of them will remain free while others can be purchased at minimal cost. Think $1-$2. The new shop is named White Rabbit Cards. For now nothing is up but a contact email, but I'm just excited that I have purchased the domain name and have it being hosted somewhere - it's a big step for me :). Shout out to my awesome husband Jon for helping me get this far in the process. For those of you that follow me, White Rabbit Cards is the little project I referred to in my Motivate post in January.

Lake Valley Camp Presentation..it's for the Teens YO!

A couple weeks ago my friend Jamie asked me to be part of a panel discussion on careers for their teens for Lake Valley Camp. (Which is a super cool organization by the way so check out the link.) So I whipped together this digital portfolio of my "regular" full time work, my freelance card design for RuvaCards, and my rubbishREMADE art/craft.

The other panelists came from totally different walks of life and everyone had a different story to tell. The teens were really nice, but pretty quiet overall. I imagine it's pretty overwhelming to hear all the information that was presented. It made me think back to the time I was that age and how much I really didn't know about what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, about going on to college and general adult stuff that wasn't really on my mind yet!

It turned out to be really fun experience and less nerve racking then I expected it to be. I've always been a bit shy of public speaking, but as I grow older and more knowledgeable and confident in my skills and abilities talking about stuff I actually do is really not all that bad at all. I'm out for now, but hope to be back sooner than a month!

Progress.

I've been quietly working on my new side project mentioned in the previous post but I've also had some time for making rubbish! Three new individual bowls (1, 2, 3), One Bowl Set and a lite beer blossom ornament.



ALSO worth mentioning if you're looking for some cool download-able Valentines go check out these bad boys I designed them for RUVA Cards. Free is good right?! Enjoy.

Motivate

So it's less than a month away from my 28th Birthday which has got me thinking. I had a spark of inspiration right before Christmas for a little project I would like to try. I'm going to be intentionally vague about this until I get more of the pieces of the project put together, but would like to share my little motivation poster I made for myself. It's a question I want to pose to myself every day in hopes that every day I will do at least some small task with the end goal of this project in mind. A daily motivator and reminder to myself to keep focused and get in gear these next two years. Let's hope it's the kind of motivation I need to get this train rolling.

Fresh Start

I can't begin to express the absolute serenity I've been feeling since the weekend. I took about a week and a half off for Christmas and New Years and I feel so much more centered and focused than I have in a long time. Jon and I were able to spend time with family and friends over the holidays and it was fantastic. The peace in my heart in my mind because of this is astounding. It's been a wonderful year and I hope to make this new one even better.

I hope to make this a year of serenity. To keep an attitude of thankfulness and heightened awareness of all that is awesome in life. To savor my life, because to be honest it's a beautiful one. I married the man I'm crazy about and he's crazy about me, our beautiful amazing and loving families, and the friendships that have only gotten stronger with time. I am truly blessed and I need to acknowledge this on a daily basis to keep the little things in perspective, to not get to wrapped up in the daily grind. I hope to be a little more Zen than I have in the past.

So with that best wishes for a beautiful beginning of the year! Sorry to those of you who did not our card - we ran out of them - next year I will be getting more printed up!

To those Family and Friends we did not see over the holiday we hope to see you sooner than later - PEACE!

New Look!

As you can see things have changed a bit around here. I'm attempting to gather all of my "stuff" to one central area online. This blog is a transformation of that. What started as a place to post random design projects, ideas, sketches and generally keep myself creative has become my catchall for everything Jess Poisl related.

I will be updating the new Design Portfolio as quickly as possible, as of right now Logo Design is the only active part of my portfolio. This has been a long time coming. I've been talking about an online portfolio for ages. It's time.

You can also view my rubbishREMADE Etsy Shop here as well. Please join us on facebook for updates on products and general rubbish fun. This is another place I hope to be adding more new product to. Stay tuned for updates. New items in the shop will be posted on this blog and on the fb fan page as well.

And the Resume & Contact section is fairly self explanatory. This won't really change much - more informational than anything. So if you or anyone you know needs some design work, please email me!

And for a little eye candy here is a shot from our Happy Halloweenie Party. I was really excited about the centerpiece I threw together especially because it was made of rubbish! Thanks to mom and dad for the little pumpkins from their garden and to my friend Jamie for the inspiration to use old beer bottles as candle holders. Brilliant!

Printable Calendar Template

Hi Friends!

I've been seeing lots of really beautiful calendar designs online lately. I was inspired to create my own simple calender to replace the one I use at work. Here is the pdf for you to to download and print for yourself. You can start using it now! It goes through next December. Below is the before of my work calendar and after with the new one. I just printed it out on cardstock and nabbed a binder clip to hold them together and voila new modern clean calendar for my cubicle.

New Holiday Card Design for ruvacards.com

I always get a little excited when Cindy from RuvaCards blogs about cards I designed. So I'm sharing it with you! We are working on a series of city and state cards, any suggestions for other cities? What would you want to purchase? RuvaCards

Positivity

This one is for my husband. Lately we've been talking a lot about goals and what we want to be when we "grow up" so keeping a positive mindset has been essential. I am trying to be more reflective on a daily basis of what I am grateful for. I am so grateful for us. We seem keep each other motivated and positive. I don't know where I would be without his unconditional love and support. And his fantastic ability to make me laugh and smile pretty much all of the time. Yay!

Freedom or Stuff?

This design exercise was inspired by this blog post from The Simple Dollar. I know it's been awhile especially since most of my last posts were about wedding stuff. I will post final pictures of my wedding craftiness in action - promise. I just haven't gotten to it yet. I think this post especially got to me today because of all the things that come with throwing a big wedding celebration. We have amazing friends and family who were beyond generous so there are lots of new items in the house and a good chunk of extra money in the bank. After all that I think this is a good reminder for us to keep a level head and remember what we are spending money and why we are spending. I follow the Simple Dollar in my google reader feed and really enjoy it. Thanks for all the great content Trent!

Random Sketch Project

Just a quick post of a random work project. It's strange the things you end up doing on staff when your the only in-house graphic designer for a financial firm. I liked how the illustration came out so I thought I'd share.

Long Time!

Every few months I try to come back to this thing. I really need to post more and I do apologize to the few of you that have been paying attention. My blog is totally weak sauce and I can't believe I've barely made any posts for all of 2009. Weak sauce to the max my friends. I guess I'm making my new years resolution early: Post weekly on the blog.

Maybe I had way to high of hopes from the beginning, I tend to overextend myself. So here goes....again. My post today is a little typography exercise. I recall when I was in grade school around Thanksgiving time there was usually some assignment about writing or expressing what your thankful for. This is my adult take on that notion. I'm a bit early for the holiday but it is only a week away! In addition I'm really enjoying the fact that the "thanks" kind of reminds me of that awesome 7 layer jello people make for the holidays...YUM.

Vote

Well it's that time of 4 years again. My inspiration for this post is the election. Tomorrow we decide who gets to be in charge of the US for the next four years. My hope for this election is record voter turnout - I feel for the first time since I've been able to vote that people are truly involved and interested in this election. No matter what side of the fence you are on go out and do your civic duty - VOTE!

Some technical details: I did most of the layout in Illustrator then brought it into Photoshop to mess around with some texture brushes. I was hoping not to completely over do it with the texture since grungy textures are on the trendy side.