Crystal Madrilejos

Design & Creative

We’ve added new items to our Etsy shop. We now have a vintage section that, so far, features vintage housewares. There is also a new basket bag up that Crystal made a couple months ago. If you have interest in such things, you should check them out. We still have more vintage items to photograph, which will probably happen sometime this week. Maybe even next weekend. Check back for updates.

Last night we finally had our meeting with Toby Goodshank and the wheels have been set into motion for our next project. You can read more about this project a few posts back. There had been some setbacks, but yes, have some: Toby Goodshank (this is the tentative name for the project) is finally happening. We have yet to decide on the release date, but we’re hoping for sometime in May. Our meeting seemed ambitious and we’re hoping that everything comes together without a hitch. Toby is an unbelievably productive artist, so we don’t imagine the slacking will be on his part!

We finally did it. Our Etsy shop is up and rolling with all of 6 products! HA! If you look to the sidebar, there is a quick link and little pictures of the featured items in the shop. We have to get cracking on new things right quick so as to expand our line beyond totes. Super Duper.

Uncategorized

Who knew?

I swear, I totally was in the process of trying to upload the totes to our Etsy shop today, but then I realized that I was unprepared. It’s a completely easy process if you are fully prepared, which I was not. I’ve decided to wait until I get home so I can ask Andrew his thoughts on things like, How do I figure out how much postage to charge? and Should we accept personal checks? these were decisions that caught me off guard. So many things to consider. Hopefully, tonight that will all be sorted out. I didn’t want to just throw out some numbers and end up underestimating the shipping costs and having to foot the bill!

In other news, I recently worked with local musician Phoebe Kreutz to lay out her new CD entitled Big Lousy Moon. Phoebe is from NYC and she is a brilliant wordsmith and quite a lovely lady. Here is the bio from her website:

Phoebe Kreutz is a boozy floozy with a heart of gold. She sings silly songs about the things she likes best: boys and bars and vikings and tacos.

Growing up in New York’s East Village, Phoebe learned a lot about all these things. She also learned a lot about rhyming from Dr. Seuss and the joys of thinly-veiled social commentary from “He-Man” and “The Smurfs”.

Now she’s all grown up and still loving life in the big city. She gets to sing in all kinds of fun places like The Knitting Factory, Fez, Birdland and The Sidewalk Café. It was there that she found the jolly antifolk scene, which has nurtured and indulged her like a benevolent uncle these past few years. It was also there that she met the boys who would later join with her to become the world’s greatest art-indie-rock band that only sings about animals in the city, Urban Barnyard.

When not rocking out on stage, Phoebe works as the puppet wrangler on the hit show, “Avenue Q”. While there, she grabbed every musician she could get her hands on and turned them into The Phyllis Newman Health Initiative Dancers – a band that blends uptown excellence with downtown crudeness with lively and sometimes dashing results.

But sometimes Phoebe hears the call of The Road and has to set off on wild adventures. She’s played in fun towns like Seattle, Olympia, Portland, Eugene, San Francisco, San Diego, Austin, Albequerque, Flagstaff and Las Vegas. She’s also brought her message of ridiculousness to college campuses such as Oregon State University and Stanford.This year, Phoebe is proud to have played twice in the “Voices for Change” benefit series for John Kerry, sharing the stage with fancy folks like Tom Wopat, Cady Huffman, Charles Busch and Christopher Durang. Also, she’s been honored to have her songs sung by “Avenue Q” stars John Tartaglia, Ann Harada and Jen Barnhart at caberets around the city like Ars Nova and Joe’s Pub.

She has been the recipient of many awards including an Emmy for her work on Sesame Street, the coveted Sportsmanship Award for her team’s pleasantly incompetent performance in the Broadway Show Softball League and $25 in the “Hot Buns” competition at the Rickshaw Karaoke Bar in Seattle.

There wasn’t much actual design work to be done on her CD because Phoebe already had the artwork she wanted to use. She really just needed someone with technical layout skillz ASAP to get it all together before her tour. It was still fun nonetheless! You should check our her musical projects here.

Fondly,
Crystal