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!

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!

Wedding Garland

Hello friends! Today I return with another wedding decoration post. "paper garlands". Like all my other ideas this came from somewhere else.  I thought it would be fun to hang it on the head table, gift table and cake table. We are not opting for the colored table linens so I thought these would bring a little brightness to those white table cloths. 

 

Wedding Shenanagins!

In an effort to share and thank those for posting great projects online I'm sharing my internet scrounging for DIY and re-purposed wedding projects with pictures of my DIY results.

Our centerpieces will utilize empty wine and spirits bottles paired with "floral poofs" made from the yellow pages. Via Jessi Hack Weddings Blog. The only thing I did differently was to round the corners before pulling them apart much like the Martha Stewart version which uses tissue paper. As far as the empty bottles go I would like to create a milk glass look like this. The large blue bottle in the middle will actually be filled with wine to serve at the tables. The petal shape motif comes from a DIY post on Design*Sponge. I'm planning on spray painting these yellow.

I also found the time this past weekend to rock out these stellar cupcake stands. Three separate trips to three different thrift stores gave me quite the collection of old plates and vases to work with. Some glue from JoAnn's and a couple hours Saturday afternoon resulted in these bad boys! So many places of inspiration for DIY stands all over the interweb: Ashley Ann Photography | The Crafty Nest | Elizabeth Ann Designs | Design*Sponge

Enjoy! More DIY wedding shenanigans coming soon! For real, I promise. Plus I've got to get invites designed. The pressure is on...

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.

STD!

From

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.

Jaybles

I wasn't really sure what to draw yesterday and spent most of my time erasing Since Jon decided he was going to go as Jaybles the surly Parrot (aptly named by Zac) I drew parrots. Jaybles might be the angry looking one in the left corner, although they all look a little angry. I will be going as Capn' Jessbeard and Jables will be my surly giant parrot sidekick. Woo! Happy Halloween!

Ribbon.

Since last Friday I've been dealing with ribbons finding the right kind of ribbon and the right quantity - yesterday I spent a good chunk of time cutting ribbon. My companies holiday cards (which I designed and am in charge of finishing) are going to be completed with a ribbon tied around the outside - I'll post a photo of the final project when it gets done. We are sending out 200 gift baskets which will contain the holiday cards out to clients. In the beginning stages of this project I thought it would be nice to finish the cards off with some ribbon. Little did I know or realize how much ribbon in takes to tie around 200 5x7 cards. Almost 130 yds or 390 ft or just for fun 4,680 inches. Yep. Ribbon.

Chilly

Yesterday was on the chilly side, I even heard there were a few scattered flurries in the afternoon. I attempted to portray my unenthusiastic attitude towards this cooling of the temperatures in a simple self portrait. It's been a while since I've done one of these and I must say I'm fairly out of practice. Most that know me are very aware of my dislike of Wisconsin winters. I'm pretty sure if I wasn't so attached to Wisconsin by family, friends, and general appreciation of the state and the Midwest vibe I would probably live someplace warmer. Last winter Jon and I seriously considered relocating to the southwest because we were so sick of snow and cold. We seem to have the same conversation every winter - then spring finally comes and all is well again. But yesterday morning was a harsh reminder of what's in store for the next 4+ months - I wore my hat and mittens on my walk into work, I'm a big baby when it comes to being cold. BRRR.

Pretty Patterns

I had a bit of a lazy weekend and unfortunately didn't make time for any sketches so I went back to some patterns I had made. For about a month I became pretty obsessed with patterns. There are so many interesting textile and wallpaper designs out there - many of them out of my budget but something about making patterns is therapeutic for me. I usually get my start with an already designed ornamental glyph and try to create something new from it. The basis of this pattern was made a while ago but I re-did it and messed around with some different color. This what I came up with my inspiration being the crispy fall weather. Let's hope it doesn't snow any time soon - it would be nice if it was still fall for a while!

Marker Madness

Well I kind of forgot that I work from home on Friday's so that means no access to a scanner. So I had a lot of fun with markers last night to finish my sketch, snapped some photos this morning and there you go. My sister and I shot a lot of emails back and forth yesterday about a proposed to road trip to visit our cousin Lynne in NY. by the end of the day the prospect of a road trip became a reality. We are totally going to road trip to NY over Thanksgiving. And I'm super pumped about it!

There's a good chance I won't post until Monday so until then Happy Friday and have a fabulous weekend!

Connected

Here goes sketch two - I posted some photos on facebook over my lunch but was hard pressed to pull myself away from the social network after posting. Making comments on photos posted, reading comments from others on said photos, and the beat goes on.

I find the online connections we have so interesting. There are so many ways we can be personally and emotionally connected with out even being in the same state. The interweb is a crazy crazy place, but enables you to do so much. This sketch is my take on being distantly connected and plugged into essentially the same network. Once again messed around with coloring in Photoshop.

I'm doing best to do pencil/pen sketches and colorize in photoshop. People who know me as a designer know I tend to rely on Illustrator a lot - it's my favorite program pretty much. I'm going to keep trying to expand my hand drawing capability!

Ready, Set, GO!

Well here it is. My first sketch of hopefully many sketches. Yesterday my word/theme of the day was "over-input" - I know not really a word but that's the first thing that came to mind reflecting upon my day. I took in a lot of really cool design posted by people online. I was on an idea generation binge, but I think I overindulged–my brain was wrecked!

So with those thoughts I decided it's high time I start outputting more - even if they are simple sketches. So I sketched this scene waiting for the train. I finished it up this morning by scanning it in and messing around with some coloration in Photoshop. No work of art but that's not the point of this.

My goal is to post 5/week - mostly during the weekday. I don't like putting too much pressure on my weekends - but if I do have time/make time I'll post more.

Hooray!