So I went to an awesome SMCUV tonight (Social Medial Club, Utah Valley) where the amazing Josh Peters gave a presentation on GLAM: setting Goals, Listening, taking Action, and Measuring the results of our actions. All of it takes a hefty dose of Listening and I liked the emphasis on that. Great presentation. I’m excited to start implementing some of these ideas with my clients. We also had some excellent food and a gorgeous event venue this month (I love Thanksgiving Point!)

Luckily, I remembered to bring my business cards and as usual, at least a dozen people told me how nice these cards were. As Kirk Rasmussen put it, “These business cards look like they mean money!” Oddly enough, they were free. Free as in you get 100 cards for the cost of shipping, and as in ad-free too. Free UV coating – even spot UV last I checked – so you can make your logo stand out with a bit of shine. How do they make money on this? Probably because so many designers (like me) keep coming back anytime we need other stuff printed. I can’t recommend them enough.

So, since several people asked for the link, here you go: Get 100 Free Business Cards at OvernightPrints.com. They have some templates, or you can use your own design like I do. Add rounded corners and they’ll fit nicely in an Altoids box. They also don’t mind you using the free offer more than once, so give them a go & let me know what you think! Oh, and if you need design work, drop me a note: I’m busy for the next several weeks, but I’d be happy to refer you out

I was looking for fun CSS tricks for my DGM 2740 class and happened across this one where essentially you just overlay your header with a semi-transparent .png.

But hey: forget gradients. Who doesn’t NEED some awesome half-toned out text, reminiscent of comic books or old 7-up cans? Let’s see how it looks. Starting with this halftone dot pattern I generated in photoshop:

Dots

Now I need a crazy header.

How’s this?

Put it all together, and what do you get?

Whoah Baby!

Would I use this every day? Probably not, but the possibilities are way out there, and it was fun giving it a try!

Here’s how it looks. Now to see if I can come up with some money to print it!

Number Zero Geek - because who wants to settle for Number One?

Oh and here’s the old design. I do think it looks geekier with the blocky font like that, but I’m not sure whether I like it as much. What do you think?

This is the old design... looks like it is still up on printfection

Oh, and one of these wasn’t actually from the hike so much as a subsequent walk around my neighborhood… bonus points if you can guess which one.

The Turner-esque watercolor project: we were to paint a storm and a man-made structure. How could I not paint this?

Watercolor study: I decided to paint a clover

Another water color study. Didn't work out so well, but it's supposed to be bread.

Wouldn't be art class without one of these, right? I can not draw circles, apparently.

Unfortunately I already threw away my line art drawing of a Dixie cup. Sorry, I know you’re just devastated.

This teacher had a simple solution: free business cards (I recommend these). 100 cards is easily enough for a teacher to give each mom and dad one card at the beginning of the school year, and still have plenty left over for notes and what not.

Since I’m such a great daughter, I shamelessly copied the idea for my mom, who is also a teacher, and designed cards for her as a birthday present. (Don’t worry, Mrs. Bills said it was OK.)

There are lots of free education templates available, but my mom wanted her school mascot on her card along with an emphasis on the sorts of things they’d be studying in 4th grade. So this is the design I made for her, with the details switched out for her privacy:

Teacher calling card

The back of the card is an excellent spot for a weekly schedule and a list of special dates through the year. Not every free business card offer allows you to print on the back and keep the special offer though — in fact I’ve seen some that print their own ad on the back. :-/

But I’ve been happy with Overnight Prints. They -will- let you print on the back for a little extra; in fact their offer (which you can get here) just takes the price of 100 cards off whatever you decide to do. They also allow you to upload your own design without an extra fee, or you can choose from the templates they’ve got. Other reasons I like them: their cards are made from heavier stock, they come with a free gloss if you want it, and they can also do offset printing. Oh, and they’re fast

Anyway, my mom is terribly happy with the results, and I’m happy to have given her something she likes so much. I may even decide to create cards for my kids’ teachers as a gift to them as well.

My new living room has the words “All Because Two People Fell In Love” plastered across the wall, no doubt above where a large family photo used to hang. Not the most encouraging thing in the world given the circumstances that had caused me to move here in the first place. So after some thought and joking around with my brothers, I decided I’d find or make an Adam & Eve picture and find a way to conceal the “in love” bit, so it’d say “All Because Two People Fell” instead.

A few weeks later, I had to make a self-expressive collage for one of my classes. Perfect opportunity, right? Here’s how it turned out:

All Because Two People Fell

I haven’t hung it yet, and I don’t know whether I will. Maybe I’ll just ask the homeowner if she’d mind me simply unsticking the vinyl lettering. Or maybe I’ll paint over it a little to calm the stark edges down a bit. What do you think?