Etsy Progress

Besides our current projects and the new endeavor that we promise to fill you in on soon, Emery is still trying to work hard on creating product for our Etsy website launch this spring.

With baby on the brain (and bladder), I've been having a lot of fun designing new onesies for the launch. The preview from our photo shoot earlier showed you some of our hand-painted items. We've been working on some fabric applique techniques for some of the new onesies. Here is a couple of the works in progress we've come up with just to give you a sneak preview:

So get excited people! Lots of new prints and colors are coming your way in the Cuddle line. These two and more will be available on our Etsy site coming soon!

Also, I recently found that trying to register as a first time mama is very overwhelming. Do you need slow, medium, or fast flow nipples for your bottles? Is the angled neck bottle any better? Do you need an infant sleep-positioner? I quickly realized this was not where to start this little adventure and it would be best to head over to the bedding and decor section. This is much more in my element and I felt a lot less dumb (at least for awhile untl I had to go back to those dreaded aisles). I could spend hours trying to pick out some of this stuff...but I brought my husband who claims to be "allergic to shopping". I found so many mobiles made of cute little animals, bugs, and other themes. We are not finding out what the sex of the baby is so as cool as we've tried to play it, it is a LITTLE bit hard to pick some things out not knowing if you have a boy or a girl. It got me thinking though that I could probably find a way to make a mobile that was exactly what I envisioned. After this, I did find a couple of cute handmade paper mobiles on Etsy that Emery loves and would maybe like to tackle for the Cuddle line somewhere down the road.

They could be customized with any papers to fit any style of nursery. They are an appealing alternative to the full themed room you find with the bedding sets in stores and can make for a very trendy baby room.

We Heart Valentines

We wanted to share some Valentine's ideas before you are scrambling to get a crafty idea together for your loved ones. Our brother, Adam has a man room filled with Cubs and Bears memorabilla. He asked us recently to come up with a project for his room...we decided to take his old T-shirts and turn them into pillows. We scored cubbie jersey fabric for the back of the pillow to make them fun and unique. Need an idea for that sports fan for Vday? Steal a Tshirt from their closet and sew away. Could be done with a concert T, an old high school or college T..anything really.


An idea for your girlfriends or anybody who likes brownies would be these Valentine brownie bags by Twig & Thistle. Find some cute bags and print the design out for free!

What is Emery doing for V-day? Working of course! We have a big opportunity coming that we'll announce soon..and we needed a work room asap. My husband jimmyed up my sewing machine into this old desk. I got the sewing machine at a garage sale (long story) for $25...and its 50 years old- true vintage. So this is where we are starting..we can't wait to see what is coming.

Emery Cowl Necks+Official Emery Logo

Megan and I wanted to show the progress of our new cowl neck scarves this week! We have several done and ready for our etsy site. Keisha won one of these for the emery holiday contest if you all remember. The picture below is us trying out a two sided version with plaid on one side, T-shirt material on the reverse.



The other thing we wanted to share with you is the progress of our logo. We have a final version! Thanks to our bro, Adam, we now have the official Emery logo!



We'll be exposing all the parts to our logo soon and how they correlate with our lines..but for now this is the main Emery logo you'll be seeing everywhere. We decided to use a vintage looking flower as our mark to reflect when our business got really serious. It was about last year when we were crafting for my wedding and decided to make all the flowers out of paper. Everyone else found it tedious, even though the outcome was awesome. Megan and I were thinking..you could do this to the petals and that to the stems to make them unique..and got really excited about them. We discovered our love for paper, patterns and watching glue dry for hours. Emery slowly became something we knew wanted to do together, and we knew sooner was better than later. I found this shop on Etsy that has several paper flower kits for sale if you want to try them out yourself.

Emery To-Do List

Megan and I met yesterday and got the rest of winter and spring lined up for Emery. Some of you have been asking...so here is what our to-do list looks like for the next four months. (pictured above is the clutches Amanda ordered in #2)

1. Keep our best Emery client, Jenna, happy. She is getting married in April and Emery has been hired to tackle her invitations, placecards, programs, monogram, and canvas art. We are super pumped about her wedding and will feature her in our blog and on our site after the big day.
   
2. Make bridesmaids clutches for our other favorite bride, Amanda. My bridesmaids loved them, we know hers will too.
3. Baby Boy Johnson is on the way any day now and Emery is going to help announce him to the world.
4. Redesign a family basement room using Meg's interior design skills.
5. Make a new lamp shade for a vintage score for our cousin Kristin.
6. Make 50 new Emery products to have on our Etsy site by April...get excited people!
7. Make sure Emery has a logo and branded look by then.
8. Meg is going to squeeze in having her first baby in this time period as well. No biggie. Don't worry. She is a multi-tasker.

So as you can see we are busy girls! Keep the orders coming, we love it... and every time we finish a major project we are going to feature it on our blog. If you want to be famous let us know.

New Year-New Look

Happy New Year from Emery! I am sure you have been thinking of your New Years' resolutions and what you're going to change to make this year a good one. Emery is busy thinking of new ideas and ways to help you do this too. While you may be thinking you want to lose ten pounds, we're thinking wouldn't it be easier to just give something in your home a crafty makeover? We have a couple of ideas to get you started.

One of our friends recently found out she is having not one but TWO babies. Twins! This mean her due date has been bumped up a month and she is working hard to get the nursery ready. She asked Emery to help her brainstorm something she could do for the closet doors in the girl's room. The current doors are just the standard wood, accordian syle closet doors that many of us have had.

We're still scheming for this project, but wanted to share with everyone what we've thought of so far. Initially I was thinking the main problem is that she sees the doors as an eye sore so maybe just paint them and problem solved. A boring, but simple solution :) Or she has been thinking of cute designs for the walls so why not stencil some of these onto some painted doors? Our friend, Hillary, is pretty crafy but painting designs can be tough because it is hard to get the results you imagine. There are so many cool papers out there now with the scrapbooking craze that I kept thinking there must be a cute way to cover the doors or a portion of the doors with this. That's when I cam across this interesting DIY project on designspongeonline.com. Casey took an old filing cabinet and covered teh drawer fronts with wallpaper. She also added new hardware and spray painted the rest of the cabinet. She basically just took her decorative paper and used mod podge to smooth and adhere the paper to the cabinet. This can be done with a fun wallpaper (believe it or not they do still exist) or use a collage of smaller papers, designs, and pictures. The collage might be cuter just to do on half the door and paint the other half or even just do the middle section. From my experience with mod podge, the thick texture of the wallpaper might make for a less frustrating project with wrinkles and tearing. If you're interested on full directions you can see the link below:

http://www.designspongeonline.com/2009/09/diy-project-caseys-wallpaper-file-cabinet.html/cablast

Casey also posted a picture of her full office with the cabinet in it. This inspired another idea for the closet doors. As you can see in the picture below, there is a magentic bulletin board above the desk. This is very similar to the one that Emily used for her holiday cards in one of our earlier blogs (Fabric Covered Magnets and Thumbtacks-11/30/09). The one Emily found was an old ceiling tile while the one Casey used was an old door. She painted the door with magnetic paint, followed by a layer of brown paint and sealed it. This could be a really good project for Hillary's closet doors. This would allow her to incorporate some fabric covered magnets (from 11/30/09 blog) and hang photographs or cute designs on the doors and change them out as the girls' get older. When they're old enough to color, it could serve as their own little art gallery to display their work. These are ideas that can be used in more then just a nursery so hopefully they've got you thinking for your own home. We'll keep you posted on the results of Hillary's doors!

And the winner is...

Keisha Lewis! with her lovely labels for her baking ingredients. For her efforts on our holiday contest, we are giving her this scarf made just for her by Emery. Thank you to everyone for participating! There was tough competition. Each entry made us so excited so we'll have to have another competition soon :) Thank you again and congrats to Keisha. Happy New Year!