PORT ANGELES — Hayley Croxford just went for it one night, drawing on her feeling for her hometown and her experiences at music festivals around the West.

And when a committee of other festival connoisseurs judged 13 contest entries last week, Croxford’s leapt forward.

“Our eyes just kept going back to hers,” said Amelia Andaleon, a Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts board member and one of the festival poster-contest judges.

And so Croxford, a jewelry designer who grew up in Port Angeles, won the competition with her speedily produced poster.

It will start appearing in windows around the North Olympic Peninsula and across the Northwest in the next week or so, Andaleon said.

“It will be a fun graphic on the T-shirts,” to be sold at the May festival, she added.

Croxford was shocked that her poster won.

She didn’t go to art school; after graduating from Port Angeles High School in 1999, she moved away, worked various jobs and then returned home in late 2010.

She now has a mixed-media jewelry line, Rise and Shine, and works a couple of day jobs: as a scopist, or editor of legal transcripts, and saleswoman at the Sassy Kat boutique in Port Angeles.

Croxford attended every day of the Juan de Fuca Festival last year — and she’ll be back this year with the pair of passes won in the poster contest along with the $200 cash prize.

Croxford’s work “seems like a 1960s San Francisco” poster, said Dan Maguire, executive director of the Juan de Fuca Festival.

He and the committee thought the poster just right for promoting the more than 40 musical acts headed for Port Angeles for Memorial Day weekend, May 25-28.

Among the headliners are soul singer Allen Stone, Zimbabwe’s Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited, former Santana drummer Michael Shrieve and his band Spellbinder, the African-Haitian-Brazilian women’s ensemble Zili Misik, the Portland Cello Project and Locarno, the Latin band featuring members of the Paperboys.

Returning acts from the 2011 festival include Blame Sally, Trio Voronezh, jazz singer Halie Loren and Abby Mae & the Homeschool Boys.

Passes to the 19th annual festival are available now at a discount: They’re $45 per person through April 30, and then rise to $55.

When the festival starts May 25, a four-day pass will cost $60.

For complete information on the lineup, tickets and related events, visit www.JFFA.org, see the Juan de Fuca Festival’s Facebook page or phone 360-457-5411.

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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.