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Amid the political speeches and blues music, April Corral sat at a folding table under the sun on Saturday and carefully crafted stationery.

Just a couple months out of jail, Corral, who “wore up” 27 of her 48 years drunk or high, knows the meaning of “re-entry” and “transition.”

At a ceremony unveiling a nonprofit community center tailored for people like her, she talked about living her dream as she peddled her hand-created wares, which resemble a watercolor but are created from mixing deodorant and the dye from pages of magazines.

“I’ve pictured myself in my mountain home or my Palm Springs home and I have a design studio and I make money, and then I give back to people who have helped me,” she said.

The new Community Reentry Project, at East 30th Avenue and Downing Street, will help people jailed for misdemeanors make the transition into regular life. The program will offer GED, computer and literacy classes. Director Jenifer Reynolds, jailed herself once for car theft, hopes to offer relationship classes too.

The project will contract with the city and county of Denver, and leaders hope to find people eligible for the program when they are still incarcerated. In 2006, about 50,000 people were released from the city jail. Reynolds hopes the project will serve up to 800 people a year – but she’d love to help more.

“I’m someone who had mentors in my life, those who believed in me when I didn’t,” said Reynolds, 38.

Corral served three months for violating probation on a drug charge. Those months were “the biggest blessing in my life,” she said, because it made her stop and look in the mirror.

“I said, ‘April, what got you here? Do you want to go back out to the streets?”‘

Corral began creating stationery from the meager things she was allowed to have in jail – lined paper, deodorant, magazines, stamps and pencils. Smearing deodorant across the magazine pages, she was able to rub color onto white paper, making it look like a watercolor. She hopes to get a small-business loan and sell her greeting cards, magnets and stationery.

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper quoted former President Lyndon B. Johnson during the ceremony. Johnson, he said, was “always trying and always becoming.”

“Again and again we’re denying people their second chance,” Hickenlooper said. “They should have a fair shot to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”