I am a creative writer who is the child of a kindergarten teacher. Perhaps this is why I immediately fell in love with eeBoo, which creates toys, games, notebooks, arts supplies, and other gifts for children and full-grown people who other people sometimes mistake for children. eeBoo’s products are all original and use artwork commissioned from children’s book illustrators. As a writer/artist, I loved the company’s focus on arts and crafts, including storytelling and writing. Late last week, I  wrote a post about some of my favorite eeBoo products.

Many of eeBoo products have earned the Oppenheim Best Toy Awards, which, if you spend any time in children/game sections of stores you will probably recognize:

Envy led me to Mia Galison, the president and creative director of eeBoo, whose headquarters are located in a turn of the century ballroom in New York City (what?!?!!). I hid my jealousy and asked her some questions about her magical job.

1. A lot of your products, including a fairy tale board game and many whimsical notebooks, encourage people to share their own stories. In a few sentences, describe your life as an enchanted tale — stick to the main plot points, but feel free to add dragons, witches, and fairy god mothers here and there.

I was the old woman who lived in a shoe. I had three children in less than two years and my husband was a self employed artist. I was a tortoise moving slowly, but I kept saying to myself “I think I can, I think I can.” There were no fairy godmothers to help or dragons to threaten, just a lot of smart, kind and helpful friends, family and associates that made the hard work mostly a pleasure. After what seemed like an endless journey, eeBoo became a goose that laid golden eggs.

2. Please describe the design process at eeBoo.

Most often I have an idea while walking to work or sorting through junk at a flea market –or cooking, or staring into space.

Most often I have an idea while walking to work or sorting through junk at a flea market –or cooking, or staring into space. I flip it around in my head–what the colors wills be, the package, the artist I’ll get to make the illustrations, that sort of thing. Then I ask [my husband] Sax about it. We walk back and forth from work every day so we have a block of time both in the morning and afternoon to discuss things. Sometimes he has good ideas and sometimes he makes me mad because he doesn’t see what I see, but even if we disagree it helps me firm up my vision of the project. I have ideas all the time. When I feel particularly buzzed about one I get started right away by calling an illustrator and sending him or her a sketch- and I get the art started. When it is a new format I get letters out to manufacturers so I can see prototypes and get prices. Often I make my own prototype in the office. Once I get some art in-house, I start to work with one of the three designers that work at eeBoo. Sometimes that means seeing a box cover design or making patterns. Sometimes it means experimenting with something completely new, like folded paper hats. I stick all my current ideas that I’m really considering on a big bulletin board. We are always working on new projects and new formats, and whatever I think I can get to market during a given season, I make..and keep the rest for the next season.

3. My mom is a kindergarten teacher. She is also the mother of a 26-year-old writer (me). Name one eeBoo product that would equally fit the bill for both parties.

We make very nice quality pastels that everyone would probably like.

4. Is your studio as amazing as it looks in the pictures? If it is more amazing, then what wonders does it contain that I can’t see in the pictures?

Our studio is in fact as amazing as it looks photos. It was built as a ballroom at the turn of the century and has 18 foot ceiling 60 running feet of skylights, mosaic floor made of yellow marble pieces, 10 foot windows and a large staircase down to what used to be the kitchen where my husband Saxton Freymann has his photograph and painting studio. What you don’t see in the photos is how many wonderful things are being made there. We are always experimenting with papers and fabrics and new materials. eeBoo also has ten lovely employees that would never allow anyone to take their pictures.

5. What are you visually inspired by?

I can be inspired by many things. Among many other things, I like Japanese illustrators from the 1930′s and 40′s, Chinese deco rugs from the 1920’2, the color pink, Belgian encaustic tiles, brand new Shanghai style, silhouettes, American quilts and naive embroidery, Hmong fabric from Chiang Mai. Unique objects that look as thought they were made for children by their mother or father with love. Embroidered blankets, crocheted hats, handmade wooden toys and stuffed animals. I could go on and on.

6. EeBoo makes lots of games for children (some of which have won awards). This makes me wonder what non-EeBoo games you play. Let’s say you’re inviting a bunch of your adult friends over for game night. Which five games do you have on the middle of your table when they arrive? (Bonus question: What snacks are next to the games?)
We are not a big game playing family but we have played a lot of Bananagrams and Masterpiece, a long extinct board game from the 1970′s based on a fine art auction–it’s goofy and easy and my kids have learned a little art history from playing it. We mostly have time to play games together when we are up in our house in Delaware County NY–there we eat S’mores with dark chocolate off of dirt flavored sticks.

7. What is your best-selling product? What product are you most proud of?
I Never Forget A Face was one of our early products and I’m very proud of it. It’s a Matching Game that includes 24 pairs of faces of children from all over the world including a girl from Afghanistan and a boy from Iraq. We included these nationalities because we made this game at the beginning of the wars and we wanted to remind as many people as possible that there were children in those countries. We get letters from children and parents all the time telling us how much they love and appreciate seeing the different faces, and about how their children make up stories about which of the children are friends.

8. One of your new products is pipe cleaner craft kits for children, animal lovers, & crafty adults. Each of the 18 different designs are creatively named for the color family of pipe cleaners they contain, and each packet can be used to create a specific animal. If these animals could come to life, and you consider their relative pipe-cleaner size, which two animals would be have the most interesting (friendly) wrestling match? Who would win?

I prefer not to think about these fuzzy little animal fighting. The Yellow Bird is a wonderful shape and the Mushrooms are wonderful.

9. Finally… what are you currently obsessed with?
Current obsessions–gnarly mushrooms from farmers markets, pom poms, fancy knee socks, Georgian miniatures, hand spun and dyed wool, and making hats.

Next week, we’ll be posting an interview with the president & creative director of the toy company eeBoo. While you’re waiting, check out some of my favorite eeBoo stuffs.

1. Composition Books, $10 Jeeze, how cute are these?
2. Good Habits Job Chart, $17 I have purchased a lot of chore charts in my day. Usually in January. (Not kidding.) Praise still gets my teeth brushed. Even self-praise. And I haven’t made my bed in a week.
3. Fairytale Spinner Game, $17 Yesss, games that tell stories! Maybe this is mostly for kids but I like it anyway.
4. Nemo & Princess in Balloon Sketchbook (+ Colored Pencil Set), $18 Much better than that yellow one with the wooden drawing doll torso.
5. “This Land is Your Land” US Wall Map, $20 For recording locational information. With stickers.
6. Sweet Stationary, $10 20 sheets of paper, 16 envelopes, & 2 sheets of stickers. I don’t know if I could really own this because even mere pictures of candy make me tear my house apart in search of sugar.
7. BONUS ITEM: Nature & Observation Notebook, $12 Envelopes and pockets for specimen collecting & more!

Last week, I gave you a lame hint that frustrated Maria.  The surprise: a message in a bottle necklace!  The top looks a little bent in the above picture, but pretend it’s straight (READ: I am watching the Jersey Shore and doing work right now, so the necklace is two floors away and I can’t take another picture.)  I’ve been thinking a lot about LOST recently, specifically when Shannon sings “La Mer.”  The English spin-off of this song is “Beyond the Sea” by Bobby Darin (thus explaining the Kevin Spacey shout-out last week):

This led me to print the lyrics to “La Mer” in a tiny font, and dunk it in tea.

Basic Supplies:

1. Miniature glass bottles.  I bought mine at Beads World in NYC, but you can find them on Etsy too.

2. Eye Pins or Screw Eye Bails

3. 1mm ball chain necklace

The assembly is pretty self-explanatory, but one note!  Ensure that the eye pin or eye bail is pushed/screwed in tight into the cork.  Otherwise, the bottle might fall off the necklace and crumble into smithereens.  Or, someone with a really fat foot will step on it.  And it will crumble.  Into smithereens.

Have a lovely weekend!  I think I’m going to go to Hampdenfest, and do a lot of studying. (Biostatistics has taught me that these would be described as “mutually exclusive events.”)

I love receiving REAL mail, and this Valentine’s Day, I wanted to send my snail mail friend something exceptionally neat.  Admittedly, mailing a surprise-filled tiny box isn’t an original idea.  Two Valentine’s Days ago, my sister (who is very crafty) sent me monkey heart socks in a jewelery box.  I thought I’d spread the tiny box valentine cheer.  To any males who found this/us in pursuit of girlfriend gift inspiration: YOU’RE WELCOME.

SUPPLIES:

Tiny box.  You can easily get a 3 x 3 box at craft stores.

A charm + chain for charm + jump ring (if the charm hole won’t fit on the chain).  I featured the above carousel in the last pocket-sized treasure post, and it is available at TheseNThose’s Etsy shop.

Card-friendly paper to make a tiny card for the inside of the box lid.

Kraft paper.

Tissue paper.

Three stamps.  This is the lazy-Tricia route.  I hate lining up at the post office to mail a package, so I’d rather send something by stamps whenever possible.  Three stamps is probably excessive, however, I also HATE getting returned mail.  I have successfully mailed the same sized box with three stamps, so that’s enough of a guarantee for me.  If you have a heavy necklace, you might need more postage (and HAVE to visit the post office, because the box cover can only fit three stamps).

STEPS:

1. Assemble necklace.  The carousel horses have manes!

2. Trace the box (length times two!) to make a card for the inside of the box lid.

4. Adhere your card to the inside of the box lid.

5. Tape the necklace to a side of the box so that the charm hangs.

6. Fold over the tissues paper, put lid on box.

7. Wrap box in kraft paper.  Make sure you use packing tape, because the post office will reject your box if you use normal tape.

8. Mail!

There’s only one more day until the premiere of the final season of LOST.  My Chicago friends are behemothic LOST fans (one is even in a LOST novelty band, Sonic Weapon Fence).  Consequently, my life has been bombarded with LOST anticipation.  Gmail user images changed to both JACKFACE and Frank Lapidus a few days ago.  But even before that, discussions in regards to a LOST party occurred.  Well, “party” = “gathering to watch Lost,” because it’s a week night, and we are old kids with 9 to 5 jobs.  I offered (via a Gmail chain of emails, and in broken English now that I’m rereading my email) to contribute beer, with possible “little dharma labels.”

Possible = Scared to commit to something I might not follow through with.  OH but fear not, a day before the big PREMIERE, I have created my own Dharma Beer labels using this Dharma Initiative Logos font on dafont.  And I am sharing it with you today, so you can create your own Dharma Beer.

Download PDF here!

Simply cut, and tape (or if you are well-stocked in office supplies, perhaps print a page on sticker paper?).  There’s two labels per page, because there wasn’t enough room on a regular letter sized page for three labels.  So, I guess you’ll have the bottom strip to doodle- hooray!  Finally, I conceded that the labels aren’t authentic.  There are some letters and numbers at the bottom of the label, but I have spent too long squinting at this screen capture, trying to figure out what the numbers are.  While I’m confessing things, if you were wondering why I’d be drinking such unsightly beer, or, you know, were perceptive to notice the text “ALL NATURAL PURE FRUIT JUICE & SPARKLING WATER” at the top, IT’S NOT BEER.  It’s Izze.  I haven’t bought beer for tomorrow night’s festivities yet.

PS- Rabbit, rabbit!  Happy February!

I could have spent my New Year’s Eve mauled by vexing teenagers at Crystal Castles, or at one of the other debauchery-filed Chicago orgies.  But…I mean…I already did that last year, and I think any future New Year’s Eve show experience will be peas to seeing Justice.  (Plus, I feel old and listless with my 9-5 job, and escaping youth.)  As a result, I stayed at home to shrink plastic and play my ukulele.

Last week, my coworker caught me looking at embossing heat tools online.  This led to my spirited declaration that I had decided to embark on a new adventure in life: shrinky dink.  Having never played with it as a child, I have always been curious about shrinking plastic.  It is ubiquitous on etsy (1,287 results!), and I like the idea of things shrinking before my eyes (NOTE: I hated “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” REFLECTION: I must not enjoy all shrinking objects).  So, for the past week I have been gathering supplies for my adventure.

Supplies:

1. PolyShrink.  Thinking that I would not be able to find Shrinky Dink plastic in any store, I found PolyShrink on eBay.  Today I discovered, however, that MICHAELS SELLS SHRINKY DINK PLASTIC.  Harrumph.

2. Stamps. These are from Paper Source.  This sad dinosaur was on clearance, so the purchase was partly fueled by pity (but the stamp is really rad).  He just wants to party!!!

3. Hand Punch. I have always been meaning to buy a 1/8″ circle punch.  Craft-wise, it is the most useful circle size.  Until this purchase, I MAY (circle) or may not had been improvising my own 1/8″…by stabbing paper with a compass spear.

4. Embossing Heat Tool. Another life desire that I made happen this week.  When I turn it on, I like to pretend that it is a large blow torch or a bazooka.  To shrink plastic, you can also use ovens.  I wanted to use an embossing tool instead because I think an oven would waste a lot more energy shrinking a small piece of plastic.

I had all the supplies to make plastic pendants and rings, WITH THE EXCEPTION of a permanent black ink pad.  I am not sure why I forgot this crucial ingredient in the mix, but I became overcome with excitement when I saw EVERYTHING ELSE lumped together, so I forged ahead anyways.  On my side was a permanent marker, and the patience to trace things.

Using this tutorial as a guide, I first made a ring.  IMPORTANT THING TO NOTE ABOUT THE TUTORIAL: Different brands of shrink plastic will shrink at different percentages.  The PolyShrink I have shrinks to 45% of its original size.  This is important to note, as I overlooked this fact, even though it is on the package.  My ring is too big.  Fail, Tricia.  I traced the bear heart stamp using my permanent marker, and it seemed to work well.  The process is slightly laborious, however, I took multiple breaks to play my ukulele since I have a short attention span.  Today I bought a black permanent ink pad, so my future is void of stamp tracing.

My third project (My second creation was a party dinosaur key chain, but I already gave that to my friend.  He seemed to enjoy it.) was a necklace!  The image might look familiar; it is the cat on the cover of Ratatat’s Classics album.  Despite hating cats in the real world, I’ve always enjoyed the cat on the album.  So I traced it.

The end of my New Year’s Eve fun!  Have you ever played with shrinky dink plastic?  Do you have any tips you could share?

1. Goldtone Banjolele Deluxe from Musician’s Friend, $450 (too shiny and would prefer the banjolele sold at the Old Town School of Folk Music’s store on Lincoln Ave. …thank you to the guy at the store who let me hold it…)

2. Yama Syphon Brewer from Clive Coffee, $50

3. Save the Manatee club membership, $25

4. Hohner Melodica from Musician’s Friend, $35

5. Wacom Bamboo Fun tablet from Amazon, $167

6. Blue Microphones Snowball from Amazon, $72.30 (so I can record songs about pies and bucolic fields…just kidding.)

7. Itazura Coin Bank (White Kitty) from Strapya World, $21.70 (watch this and you will be convinced)

8. Proximity Magazine subscription, $30 (even if you’re illiterate, you can still admire the STUNNING typography and layout)

9. Speedball Ultimate Screen Printing Kit from BLICK, $85

10. Keyboard stickers by Christopher Morno DeLorenzo, $15 (B for Bowie!)

And that’s the end of our wishlists.

Of course the Stickers and Donuts team’s greatest wish is to hear from you (we know you’re reading!  Google Analytics does not lie!)  SO!  Now it’s your turn.  What’s on your wishlist? Fulfilling the S&D wish not a good enough reason for you to comment?  Well, here’s a bribe.  The first 10 people who comment (excluding any S&D writers, however, they are encouraged to comment regardless) will receive a S&D surprise.

This week’s craft is effortless: wall art!  It’s an easy way to update a wall, and you can painlessly swap prints as often as you would like.

Supplies

Canvas! Craft stores usually sell inexpensive beginner/value pack canvases .  The canvas used above is 16″x12″.  For those of you who are more ambitious, you can build your own wooden frame with wood and nails.  But I’m a sloth, and that route demands too much effort.

Fabric! Choosing the fabric will probably take longer than assembling the wall art.  Below is a sample of fabrics that I’ve used.  The left is an OLIVIA (!) print from eQuilter, which I picked for a friend who loves Olivia.  The print on the right is Joel Dewberry‘s “Sparrows.”  If you don’t live near a good fabric store, eQuilter (Quilters. LOVE. FABRIC) and REPRODEPOT FABRICS have great selections.

Iron!

Stapler!

Steps

1.  Cut fabric so that there is an inch of fabric around each side of the frame.

2.  Iron fabric.

3.  Turn canvas over, and staple the fabric to the frame.  Make sure that the fabric is taut (and not crooked)!  Yes, my staples are purple.  Five years ago I had an essay to staple, and no staples.  I went to the school store, and discovered that everyone else  had ALSO ran out of staples.  The lonely staples that remained? Purple.  Since boxes of staples seem to last eons, purple staples will scar my documents FOREVER.

4.  You’re done!  Hang your new creation on the wall.

Remember when I got all excited about American Apparel’s Circle Scarf because you can wear it a million different ways? Well, I’ve always wanted our dear circle scarf, but I never wanted to spend the dough, and since our economy is down the tubes, maybe you don’t either!

As you have probably already deduced, you could make a circle scarf out of any long strip of fabric if you just sew one end to another. Still, I’ve come up with something even more impressive.

A pillowcase!

Cut off one end (or take out the seams), and voila, you are done.

You can spend the rest of your unemployed day creating new costumes. I actually really like the simple scarf configurations. The bestest part of this is the potential for insanely designed scarves (if you have, let’s say, a Mickey Mouse pillow case!).

Yes, that’s seriously the end of the how-to. And, no, I wasn’t feeling very modely (if you want to know the truth — MANGO SKINS CONTAIN POISON THAT HAS REDUCED MY FACE TO AN ITCHING MASS, go to wikipedia if you don’t believe me about that crazy fruit!) so these aren’t my most stunning pictures. Errrr.

Thrilling Tips: (1) If you do have a sewing machine, you can hem the end you cut (I don’t, and my scarf prevailed nonetheless). (2) Use a belt to keep a halter shirt or a skirt from falling down. It’ll work best if you put on the belt and then flap some fabric over the belt after it’s tightened. (3) Add decorative pins. (4) Speaking of pins, the side-halter and the one that goes tight around the neck were created using a strategically placed pin. (5) I used a chopstick to keep together that knot on the bathing suit style top. (6) My pillow was made of stretchy jersey fabric. This made it more flexible for cool configurations.

Finished? Here are my other Unemployment Projects.

I’ve written before about my inspiration binders and inspiration boards, and the resulting outfits such projects inspired. But now that you’re unemployed (see all unemployment projects here!) you have time to go crazy with your inspiration binders and achieve something else equally important — getting rid of all of those magazines I know you’ve been saving.

I had stacks of Print, Oprah, Real Simple, Nylon, Teen Vogue, Good, and ReadyMade (between Oprah & Teen Vogue, try to guess my age!) piling up in my shelves and taking over my life. I am a packrat, so I couldn’t just throw them away.

I made multiple binders with the following categories: Fashion (with tabs for: hair, makeup, professional clothes, socks, and awesome outfits); Recipes (real food, desserts); Crafty Inspiration (Cool Page Layouts, DIY, and Home).

Here are some excerpts from my fashion binder:

Here are some Tips & Tricks for your binder making:

• In my fashion binder, I chose to cutout my fashion inspirations and mix them together on blank white paper under clear sleeves, but because most of the recipes I found took up entire pages, I just hole punched them and put them directly in the binder (with a blank sleeve at the front so I can take one to the kitchen and not ruin it).
• For my fashion binder, I only put in items I could feasibly make with my own wardrobe, this way the binder would be really useful when getting dressed (its purpose!).
• But I was too sad to leave some awesome fashions in the recycling bin, so I labeled one clear sleeve “Love Em” for outfits I loved but couldn’t see making with what I already owned.
• I also made an “Archives” sleeve to stuff in things that started to get old. This way, I can cycle through inspirations as my fancy strikes.
• I actually use my binders for reference! And you should too! Sometimes, I take out something cool and put it on my inspiration board (ie bulletin board hanging in my room reserved for inspiring things).
• If I like something on both sides of a page, I don’t use a white background in my sleeve. If something takes up too much space, but I think I might like to see the whole thing or if there is more info I might want to reference, I fold it instead of cutting it out. Sometimes I’ll tape extra info about a product onto the back of the picture if I think I’ll want to reference it later.
• Yes, you can probably do this project while watching reruns of everything you already watched reruns of on Hulu.

Finally, a crafty reader named Ann sent me the funniest email and an awesome project. While you’re going through your magazines, cut out little squares of solid colors and use them to make or decorate something you need, like a CD rack. I’ll give you her instructions:

“After many rounds of somewhat lame cross-stitch projects, I needed something different to do, so I decided to attack my mysterious Vogue subscription (mysterious because I have no idea why they’re being sent to me because, obviously, I can’t afford anything advertised there) collection. I needed a storage solution for my cds and whatnots, but since I couldn’t find a cool box that i liked from target, I decided to grab my scissors, magazines, and glue and get to gettin.”

“First, I cut down my Quaker Oats jumbo box to about 5″ high. Then I started ripping out pages from my magazine, focusing on those pages that were mainly of one color, or of fun pattern (stripes, plaids, and flowers). Then I started cutting out 2.5″ squares from those sheets of paper. THEN I folded in the four corners, glued, flipped over, folded in the four corners again and glued, to make mini squares. THEN I sorted them into ROYGBIV order, then glued them onto the box. I cheated a bit on the long sides, but I like the finished product well enough.”

With both of these projects in hand, you should be busy for at least two days!