Crystal Madrilejos

Design & Creative

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To Ohio…Again!

Today we head back to Ohio for our monthly visit! I thought I’d post with some news before we took off for a long weekend.

1. Another Lil’ Johnny Muttoncakes is almost complete. I just have to close him up and he’s good to go. I’ve been wanting to silkscreen the tags, but our printing process of late seems to be one obstacle after another. We’ve been having a helluva time getting the screens clean after printing, which I keep hearing is a pretty common problem. Andrew is almost to the point of throwing his hands up with the whole thing!

2. We had our little meeting at Exit9. The buyers weren’t there but one of the owners looked at our stuff to get a feel for what we do. She seemed very optimistic about things, so we’re going to forge ahead with our stuff and just keep trying to improve things until our next meeting after Labor Day. I’ve been working on new straps for some of our tote bags which I’ll post pictures of soon.

Have a great weekend!

Fondly,
Crystal

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Lil’ Johnny

We’ve been pretty productive with lots of deadlines on the horizon and new projects cropping up left and right. I thought I’d give you a look at the new character in the Toby Goodshank line. May I introduce Lil’ Johnny Muttoncakes! He turned out better than I expected!

Tomorrow we’re meeting up with the lovely folk at Exit9 here in NYC to see if they might like to carry some of our goods. They had asked to see our stuff after they saw our Lion tote that our friend Nan had bought. We’ve been going back and forth with them for awhile now, but our schedules have never been in sync until now. I didn’t mention it before because I didn’t want to jinx it, but I’m so excited that I thought I should share it. We’ve been working on stuff to show them, but I haven’t had time to take pictures of anything. I’m crossing my fingers that they will like the stuff we made. You should check out their site (or if you’re in the area, check out their store!) You can order online as well. They have wonderful and amazing stuff! Some of my personal favorites are:


Dart Coat Hooks (Original design by Anthony Chrisp)


Mushroom Kitchen Timer


Vestal Dolby Watch


Sharan Camera


Yoshitomo Nara Postcards

Fondly,
Crystal

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Back in Business

Yessss! The emails subscriptions are back up. And they we’re REALLY backed up. If you have a subscription, you probably got an email with the last 5 or so posts. Now you’re all up to date.

Here are the images I wasn’t able to post the other day. These are our in process images of the 2nd run of Toby prints. The set up isn’t ideal, but it’s a million times better than what we had before.

I spoke to Toby today and hopefully this weekend we’ll have all the prints done and ready for signing.

These are the two completed Mandor dolls complete with summer shorts. These proved to be a lot more difficult than I thought they were going to be, but I made it through and I think they turned out pretty good considering I know nothing about sewing.

And lastly, this is a bunny that has been in the works for a little while. I just could never get around to close him up. I followed a pattern out of a Japanese craft book. Japanese craft books have some of the most amazing things, unfortunately they are in Japanese and I can’t read a lick of it. I stumble my way through and maybe that’s why his head looks like he’s looking up to the sky, which it’s not supposed to do. It’s charming in it’s own confused sort of way. The little knit ram next to him was a present I got for Andrew while I was in France. To the very far right, getting cut out of the picture, is a the prototype for Little Johnny Muttoncakes. The next in line for the Toby Goodshank stuffed dolls.

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Darn this stuff!

We’ve been having some technical difficulties over here at yes, have some. I noticed that email updates haven’t been going out and I did some searching to figure out why. I think I may have figured out the problem (which had to do with trying to publish our blog to a domain name rather than just to the regular “.blogspot.com” site.) I know not what i’m doing, so i’m hoping that it’s fixed. I’ll have to look into it some more.

New pictures to come…

Fondly,
Crystal

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Today is a slow day…

I forgot to bring my camera to work today so I can’t upload the photos that I took this weekend of the stuff that we did.

1. It turns out yes, have some. has a side gig that involves 2 things I love! Buying stuff and vintage clothing. I mentioned a couple posts back that I had an appointment with a vintage store owner in Brooklyn to sell some clothing that we picked up last time we were in Ohio. This meeting was sort of a gauge to see if this whole venture would even be worth it and fortunately the meeting went pretty well. I know little about fashion, but I’m learning. I do know about what I like and what I think looks good, so I at least have that going for me. Between what we sold to the vintage store, both Beacon’s Closet, and Buffalo Exchange we made a good chunk of change that will at least pay for our monthly trips home, with some to spare!

2. We finished another run of lamb prints for Toby Goodshank and a run of a different print. We have two more prints to run and some labels for the dolls. We’re making headway and I plan on making some little announcements for the online release date sometime in the near future.

3. One side of the Medicine Man CD cases is printed, but we ran into some problems with this one. The cases are glossy which we weren’t really prepared for, but they still look great. We had quite an assembly line going. Doing 100 prints at home isn’t necessarily difficult, but the main obstacle is trying to find enough places for these things to dry! We were surrounded!

I’ll do another post later with photos.

Fondly,
Crystal

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Cheese on Bread Tee!

YESSSSS!!!

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Camera Fix

This proved to be the week of cameras for me. My digital camera finally bit the big one. I take it almost everywhere so it had a good run. A couple weekends ago, I brought it to the beach and true to it’s nature, the sand found its way into the camera and caused the camera to make very scary sounds. In the end, the lens just refused to focus on anything. So, that was that. I insisted on getting a new camera as soon as possible due to our trip to Ohio. Too many babies around to not have a camera.

The camera that broke was the Canon Powershot SD300, and I loved loved it.

My replacement camera is the Canon Powershot SD750 and it’s super-fance, but I still have yet to have any real bonding time with it. To be honest, I like the SD300 better but i’m also bad with letting go. I’m sure on many levels my new camera is better and takes infinitely “better” photos, but I just can’t stop comparing them and saying (slightly under my breath) “I like my old camera better.” Ah, ’tis life. This is the new fancy camera:

Also ANOTHER camera story. When I was in college at Parsons, I took a Photography studio class and for an in-class assignment the teacher gave everyone an old Polaroid Land Camera and told us to buy film and walk around the city and take photos. It was a great time and who doesn’t love polaroids? Land Cameras are pretty common, being that they were the standard back in the day, so everytime I go thrifting I come across them. A few years back, I finally bought one at a Salvation Army. It was in good shape and still had it’s carrying case with all the original manuals and whatnot. They still make film that works with this type of camera, but unfortunately a lot of the types of batteries these cameras take, are not standard. So to make a long story not as long, I found a place online that broke down each model of Land Camera and what batteries it takes and what film you can use. Finally, I’ll be able to put this baby to use:

I’ll post photos as soon as I get the film and batteries in the mail!

Fondly,
Crystal

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One Step Forward…

A Toby Goodshank Line update! Haven’t had one of those in awhile. Things are still moving along as slow as ever, but I did manage to finish one (rough) stuffed Mandor. I totally over-estimated my sewing skills, but they are sort of charming in their handmade sort of way. The tags have yet to be printed, and there is another Mandor doll almost done. He’s not as good looking as the first one, but they are pretty similar.

Also, one run of limited edition prints are almost completely done. Here are some shots of the prints, which I hope to get signed and numbered.

What prompted this burst of productivity? you ask, well we’ve signed up to silkscreen 100 cd covers for local NYC musician The Medicine Man, which have to be done by the end of the month. The Toby prints have been sitting in our screens for a little while now, and now we need the screens to print the cds so we’ve sort of been forced to forge ahead with the supplies we have instead of buying new screens. I’m hoping to set a deadline for the Toby stuff relatively soon. I’m shooting for the beginning of September, but i’ll keep you posted.

We’re heading to Ohio for the weekend to visit the families. While we’re there we’ll be hitting up the thrift stores for more wares to sell on Etsy (which is going pretty slow lately….sigh..) but also i’ll be on the lookout for some vintage clothing. There is an amazing vintage clothing shop near where we live in Brooklyn called Olive’s Very Vintage. I stopped in the other day and spoke with the lovely and beautiful owner/buyer Jen, and asked if she needed anyone to travel to the midwest and buy stuff for her store. She was very nice and made a list of things I should keep my eye out for.

This is something i’ve always wanted to do. We go back to Ohio ALL THE TIME and I always find so many awesome things that
1.) don’t fit me
2.) are super cute but not my style
3.) I can’t justify buying because I have way too many clothes and shoes and way too small apartment (and closet) and between Andrew and I, our clothing cannot be contained.
Selling the clothing on Etsy or Ebay is always an option, but there is just something too wonderful about going into an actual vintage clothing store and looking at the stuff in person.

Wish me luck!

Fondly,
Crystal

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Mix Tape

Everyone at one point or another receives a mix tape or makes a mix tape for a friend or significant other. A few years ago, I decided to make a mix cd for my friend Brian F. for his birthday. I know this is a few years late, but it’s probably one of my favorite things that I’ve ever made. I was browsing through my iphoto and came across these pictures of said mix cd, that I’m sure I was planning on posting at some point. So finally here they are.

The brown thing with the initials is a case that I sewed to hold both slim-line cd cases. It’s made of felt with a vintage rick-rack stripe across the top. I embroidered his initals with yellow floss. I can’t remember what stitch I used, but I imagine it was something pretty basic since, as you can see, my embroidery skills are not top notch.

The covers for the cds are collages I made from old school workbooks that I found in my parents attic. Super seventies. I wish I had an image of the playlist because I can’t remember it off hand. If I remember correctly, it was all local NYC musician friends. Here are closer up detail shots.

Fondly,
Crystal

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Showin’ Some Love

If you are in the NYC area, you should definitely check this out. Our dear friend Scarlet of Bun is having a jewelry sale and we highly recommend it. If you can’t make it, then be sure to check out her stuff online.