Hi! We are Jeff & Karen Pisel and we have a small sign shop in Paonia, Colorado. We have been Valley Sign & Design for the past 6 years.

Neither one of us really had any sign education to speak of when we started the shop, although I had been painting holiday & promotional windows for about 20 years. I painted my first sign for my brothers Mayflower agency in Kingman, Arizona when I was 18. It was two 4'x16' signs. I laid the whole thing out by hand, painted them with 1-shot, got paid a whopping $75.00 & decided I had better get better grades in college...cause I didn't want to have to do anything like that again!

Instead I got married (BAD IDEA...should have stuck to making free signs!) and ended up in Colorado in 1987. Divorce can be such a sweet word...I got a life of my own in 1989 & met the nicest man imaginable a year later...yes, that would be Jeff. I bought a silkscreen press on a whim, (always wondered how it was done) and we started Ninth Wave Design in the back room of my video store.

People began to ask if we did other things ..like signs & Valley Sign & Design was born. We sold the video store, bought a 486 computer, Roland cutter & off we went thru the fog. Jeff has great layout & color abilities and I'm in charge of turning his ideas into computer sketches. We use a combination of paint & vinyl and Jeff has been honing his lettering skills along the way. Me? I'm finally learning to type!

I have two boys ( the best of the married years) Travis, who is 23 and living up in Seattle, Washington (who also just made me a Grandma last Oct.) and Justin, who is 18 & living/going to school at the University of Colorado at Boulder this year (who has promised to NOT make me a Grandma until I'm old enough...about 70 at least). Jeff & I have two dogs...Pico & Taffy and two cats...Ziggy & Alley. We bought a place of our own about a year & a half ago...about a half mile outside of Paonia, Colorado.

It's just about  the prettiest place you'll ever see. The whole Valley is made up of orchards..peaches, apples, cherries, grapes & hay fields. Paradise if someone left you alot of money at some point in time...otherwise, a darned hard place to make a living. But we keep doing our best.