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!

Oh Dear

Well it's happened again. Too much going on in life and total lack of posting. My quick and dirty "creative" activity as of late is snapping instagram photos with my newly acquired android phone, welcome to 2012! (And a big thank you TING for offering data plans that don't break the freakin'  bank! As much as I would love an iPhone, Ting doesn't offer them...only amazing pricing that's to hard for this cheap-o to pass by)

Instagram is a simple quick and fun activity to artistically document day to day life. Lots of train related photos either on the train or at the stations and featuring of course my favorite fuzzy children, Lanie and Morgan. So for some visual fun here are the last three I've snapped.



I plan on posting more soon, because I've been rocking out some cool stuff for ruvacards.com and we are getting a new holiday site up soon. So exciting, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the site design gets impletment soon and looks good (cause I did it!)

On a more personal note it's been an interesting 2012, I hurt my back in February and it's been life lesson after life lesson since. I'm on the road to getting better and feeling  better. Someday I'll figure out this whole life work balance thing and actually get things posted on this barren excuse of a blog. LOL!

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!

Ideal Home Show - London

Well hello blog! It's been far to long. But I'm back now! I had an exciting opportunity to have my work used as an "accessory" in the Open Plan Living House for the Ideal Home Show @ Kings Court in London this March. I was contacted on February 12th and needed to get them a bowl by March 5th. So I made the bowl in the slideshow below. They were nice enough to send pictures of it in action in the kitchen of the show home. I cropped the photos they sent to focus on where the bowl was located, it's kind of in the background. But still pretty exciting! The woman I worked with was really excited and said they all loved the bowl. So YAY for rubbish! Other than this March has been kind of a bust for extra curricular creative activity. I hope to get a fresh start in April and to be a little more prolific with the blog posts. Thanks to those who occasionally check in on my less than fruitful blog. :D

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!