Autumnal Insta-Roundup

 I, like most people these days, have an unwavering love/obsession/sickness for Instagram. It's fricken genius - don't try to deny it (even if you did try to deny it and it were right on any sort of level I would still strongly disagree with you because that's just how obsessed I am with it).

That paired with an intense passion for Halloween-esque happy times I find myself

1. gathering/making/surrounding myself with all things cutesy-fall 
2.  proceeding to take pictures of it

Enjoy!

Nourished - A Book Design Experience

I haven't been keeping my blogging up with the rest of my life these days. It's actually quite funny because I blog often for the marketing agency I work for ( check out the blog posts I write for Web Marketing Therapy) and for clients as a ghost writer, and perhaps that has sort of dampened my enjoyment of blogging for myself. Or maybe I just kinda forgot about it - which seems like a common theme ever since I started this thing. Regardless, I am here today and sharing with you a project I worked on for quite sometime and finished back in April - book design and layout for a cookbook!

I met cookbook author Luna Paige Smith last fall through a fellow designer's referral. I found Luna's passion, compassion and creativity in both her recipes and cookbook ideas to be inspiring.

 Nourished - The Art of Eating and Living Well; is a collection of all natural, gluten-free recipes, insights and information for a fresh, feel-good life. Some may call me biased, but every single one of the recipes I have tried in her book is truly delicious (and healthy!).

Nourished was a labor of love and a melding of minds between each of us working on the book. The beautiful photography by Spencer Weiner really brought the book to life. It is self-published, was printed through an on-demand publishing company called CreateSpace and is available for purchase on Amazon.com.

Below are some of my favorite elements of the book.

Back and Front Cover 

The title page showcases the collage look we incorporated into the book and helps to introduce the reader to the illustrations hidden amongst the pages.

Inner recipe page - highlights the simple layout and use of the gorgeous photos by Spencer Weiner.

This is an example of one of the inner chapter pages - it helped to break up the book into specific categories.

Some recipes did not have photos and that was ok, because simple custom illustrations were created by me and peppered the book in fun little nooks and crannies.

Illustrations were simple gestured line drawings in a soft grey.

Yum.

One of the most special things about this book is that Luna Paige Smith is donating a portion of the proceeds of every cookbook to select organizations devoted to providing hunger relief and sustainable living skills to those in need around the world. You can read more about Luna and her cookbook at her site Nourished By Life. I hope you buy a book and get cookin!

If Bewitched Had a Sister

If Elizabeth Montgomery's Bewitched character Samantha had a naughty sister, or maybe in this case, a granddaughter, I imagine she would look something like the witchy chick below. I haven't given her a name yet, but if you have any suggestions I would love to hear them. 

Born from a doodle on the phone, I couldn't help but give this witchy lady a nice wash of color to bring her to life. It also helps to have Halloween on the brain with it quickly approaching.

An Ode to Santa Barbara Fall - Princess Illustration

There is something about the transition into fall here in Santa Barbara that gets me excited and drawing again (usually fall related illustrations and richly colored patterns and watercolor experiments).

I can't really say its the sudden changes in weather or the massive landscapes of changing leaves that do it, because (quite frankly) that doesn't happen here. Don't get me wrong, we do experience a fall - of sorts - but it is a slow and gradual shift in more than one way. The first sign is the shortening of days and the odd change in light as shadows appear and disappear in strange ways, followed by what I have deemed as "spider season".  Then the pumpkins begin appearing at my local Trader Joe's. The fog slowly starts to creep back in the Santa Barbara morning air. My apartment turns into a freezing cave of despair and the fuzzy slippers come out of hiding.

Fall in Santa Barbara is mild and it's beautiful - so I drew a mild and pretty Fall Princess that represents the seasons subtleties in color.

Floral Friday Watercolor

Santa Barbara weather can get a little gloomy this time of year. I know it's probably a little counter intuitive for sun-shiny California to get gloomy in the beginning of June - but it happens. To us locals we like to refer to the phenomena as June Gloom. And I can assure you - it's gloomy. Foggy, overcast skies hug the coast and bring with them a high level of sad faced days (at least on my end). To alleviate the depression, many locals know that the trick is to head to the Santa Ynez Valley for some wine tasting or (supppper top secret) river floating at the Santa Ynez River. In fact, a group of my pals headed that way to day for just that reason (and to celebrate my dear friend Tessa's birthday). I couldn't make it and as such, I decided to lift my spirits with a good round of afternoon exercise and a cheerful little watercolor post for everyone. 

On that note, here's to a sun shiny weekend to all of my friends! Xoxo - Jennie

For interesting design, illustration and web marketing posts - visit me on Twitter @jenniejacobs

Monster Mash

Last weekend I took the time to play with my watercolors a bit. A joy of mine that I can never seem to actually do these days. I like to blame it on my lack of workshop space because the  taking-out or packing up of paints and supplies really makes the act of creating not as fun. And as such, I get workshop envy. My friend and artist Lalove Benedict has the perfect little work space in which she can spread her painterly goods from tables to wall to easel in one swoop and never has to clean it up (except, of course, when we came to visit and slept in said workroom).

Despite the hassle of cleaning, I took my paints out and played. And, in the end it was well worth it:
 I had fun creating some silly little monster friends, a theme of which I was developing for a custom painting for friends' baby (post to come). Below is the end result:

Freebie Wallpaper for New Years Fun

Better late than never, but I wanted to give all of my friends a chance to download the wallpaper version of the calendar collaboration of mine and Kyle Phillips for the month of January. We are making a new yearly tradition of combining mostly Kyle's and some of my Holga camera film shots, with a fun and simple design aesthetic. We are into year two of our calendar tradition and we hope to keep the momentum going into 2013.

A small handful of friends and family received the calendars as printed pieces, but as always, we can't supply an endless amount of calendars (although we wish we could). By giving away this free desktop wallpaper we are hoping the our creative endeavor of film meets illustration/design  can be enjoyed by many more.

If you are interested in purchasing a printed calendar please email me at jennie@jennie-jacobs.com and I will be happy to custom print a new one for you for total of $15 including shipping to anywhere in the U.S.! Weeeee!

To download the free wallpaper (or this peony wallpaper) simply click on the image below to open in a new window. Then right click to save to your computer and add as your wallpaper.

Big Things

Here's to big things in 2012! Cheers!