Spring sprang & we welcomed warm busy days, lots of new artwork, and the arrival of a tiny bundle of joy.

Hey Guys! 

Man, it feels good to be back! Thank you so so much for checking in on us, and thanks to everyone who took the time to comment on our last post! We realize that it might have been jarring to look at Christmas pics on Memorial Day weekend, and this post will also be a throwback to previous months but we'll skip past the end of winter at least.

Again, the new studio space upstairs in our house made the cold months so much more bearable. Our Valentine's Day was great...full of pink and red and chocolate. But lets just jump ahead to Spring.

The first few days of being able to go without cranking the heat were just the best. Yeah, we're cheap dates...if we get to walk around the house without having to wear hoodies we feel like lottery winners.  

Every Spring I can't wait to bring out these faux chocolate bunnies!  

We debuted a new Springtime diecut plaque. Some of you old school readers may recognize the painting! Years ago our Party Chick cake used to be a plaque with a polka dot background. For the updated diecut version we lost the background and punched up the cake details We really love how it turned out! 

Easter means cupcakes around here! 

We baked some classic Magnolia bakery vanilla cupcakes to take over to the family get together at my baby brother Walt's new house! Two batches...one half with vanilla buttercream and the other half with chocolate buttercream. 

Yeah Aunt Jenny & Uncle Aaron take Easter seriously. 

Here is Miss Olivia hunting for eggs. She has gotten so big! 

We're pretty productive all year long, but in the Springtime we seem to get a bunch more done. Here is Aaron working on some sweet lettering on a "Cakes & Cupcakes" sign order. 

Lots of Sprinkles bottles were off to new homes...

and bunnies, and a whole bunch of our Happy Everyday cakes...

and of course there were some slices of Pizza...

and Donuts too!

We also added some plants to our offerings! 

 Our Succulents do not require a green thumb! ;) Love these!

A very popular order combo has been our amethyst and single succulent. 

Oh and finally...we painted the ultimate Banana Split plaque! 

We also brought back our 5x7 mini plaques! 

"Celebrate Everyday"  

(Not sure if life is imitating art or if art is imitating life here.)

A new favorite sweatshirt from one of my fave brands Stay Home Club. Proud members. ;) 

We had another family fun day for Mother's Day. Walt's new house is perfect for family get togethers. Here's uncle Aaron and Olivia. I'm pretty sure they were playing "Super Hero".

And here's the newest addition to the family! My brother Richard and his wife Stephanie welcomed baby RJ...who happened to be born on his big sister Olivia's birthday! That definitely doesn't happen too often. 

He's one sturdy little guy and so far he's the most cool, calm, and collected little dude around.

For brevity's sake we can say that we're pretty much all caught up now. If we were to accurately recap the past six months, you'd all be alarmed at closely our life resembles the movie Groundhog Day. It's like one long continuous stream of donuts, cake, pink & aqua tissue paper, morning smoothies, trips to the post office, needy little chihuahuas...

That last item isn't even slightly a joke...our little pups seem to think that our lives revolve around their walks, their food, and their snuggles...which isn't far from the truth I guess.  

Ok...let's call us officially caught up. We've got lots of good stuff in store and hopefully we'll have a brand new post up in a few days. Thanks so much again for the warm welcome back!!

xo, Jenny & Aaron

Springtime crafting with some of my favorite things

I still cannot believe that this coming Sunday is Easter. Just wow! I kinda feel like Easter always pops up out of the blue, but this year feels even more sudden. Like, where did the month of March even go?! We had plans for bringing back our chocolate rabbit diecuts, and paper mache rabbit prints as plaques and possibly even an Easter cake diecut…but as it will sometimes, LIFE happened! 

And apparently the calendar got the last laugh. So this year there are no chocolate bunny diecuts, no Easter cake diecuts, etc, etc…and at first the idea of this really got me down, but I know we are doing our best and working as hard as we can right now. So I'm not gonna come down too hard on myself for not getting things done. 

And even though we didn't get to launch a new Easter collection, in the past couple weeks we still shipped off a handful of bunny pieces that we offer year round! Like our fave Bunny Baby diecut, and our Vintage Stuffed Bunny plaque. 

We worked all weekend…as always, and I think Aaron's hands are still vibrating from the amount of time he spent on the scroll saw. So many donuts are off to new homes, and a bunch more will be shipping tomorrow and Thursday. This makes us very very happy. A whole lot of time and care goes into these. Just cutting out those holes in the donuts takes an entire afternoon. 

By now we've developed a pretty good system. Aaron will close himself off in what we call "the cutting room", (which is a room we gutted after Hurricane Sandy and never had a chance to finish) so yeah,  the cutting room is super tiny and at present it's sole purpose is for cutting and sanding our diecuts and signs. Aaron will emerge (covered head to toe in a fine powder of sawdust) from the cutting room with a stack of freshly cut and sanded donut shapes, hand them off to me, and I'll do the gluing up while he cuts and sands another stack. Then, by the time he's through with the dirty work, he'll join me in the studio and together we'll do all of the finer finishing touches. It's repetitive work, but it never bores us because we love the items and we love the people who ordered them. It sounds corny, I know, but that is truly how we feel. Our ultimate motivation is just knowing where these pieces are headed once they leave our studio.

So while we were doing all that stuff I had a window of time where a bunch of things were drying and I had an idea for a fun little springtime project. And yes, the project features one of my favorite collections…my vintage stuffed bunnies!

We were lucky to have some great photo shoot worthy sunshine that day. So in the brightest part of the studio I set up my bunnies one by one and was able to get some clear and vibrant photos of each. Then I printed them out, adhered them to some cardstock with modpodge, brushed on a top coat, and cut them out. 

I just love seeing them as they are right here lying on my worktable. They would make really fun ornaments. 

But my plan was for this garland! I cut a length of this super cute pom pom trim and just taped the bunnies to it with washi tape.

I hung it on a cupboard in the studio. I really love how it turned out! So simple to do! And this could be done using photos of any favorite collection! Imagine pretty little vintage dolls, or even just the doll faces! I was talking to my mom about how easy this was…from concept to completion it took like an hour. I think I'll be making her one adorned with her favorite cabin themed things to hang in their log cabin. 

Here are some of my favorite things on display in the studio. I have been collecting paper mache rabbits for over 16 years, maybe longer! But man have the prices soared in recent years! I'm glad I got the bulk of my collection way back when they were affordable. Nowadays I literally cringe when I see the current prices. 

It's vital to surround yourself with the things you love…especially in the space where you create.

I don't know if I ever shared this here, but you can see it mixed in with all my paper mache rabbits and other candy colored bits in the photo above. It's a vintage Good & Plenty box that I found in a great antique shop here on the Jersey Shore a couple of years ago. Isn't it so much fun?

And lastly, I just needed to share this one again. If you are looking for a fun Easter/ Spring craft to do this week, check out this little how-to for these vintage inspired spun cotton bunny and chick toppers that we had shared last year! 

We loved making them…and seriously, they are so easy and you'll have them to brighten up your cupcakes or other sweet treats for many Easters to come.

Ok, thanks again for reading. We're still cold here in Jersey, but we're hoping hoping hoping for at least semi-tolerable weather for Easter Sunday so we can go out for a stroll and get some festive eats. That would be fantastic. What are your plans for Easter?!

xo, Jenny…and Aaron says hi!

Around here…

This photo is part wishful thinking, part incantation. Maybe if I put enough pastel Easter stuff around those lingering piles of snow will finally melt away and bring the daffodils into bloom. We're currently still cranking the heat, and still wearing heavy winter coats and hats for our daily walks to the post office. But at least the days are longer now and there is more sunlight. I mean, don't get me wrong, I've got bunnies and feather trees out all year round, but when push comes to shove I'll pull out even more to create some weather defying table top parties.

Some of my favorites have to be our faux chocolate rabbits. We love faux sweets...faux cakes, faux donuts. We found these years ago in a cute shop here on the Jersey shore. I wish I could find more. 

This race car fella kills me! Totally looks good enough to eat! Usually I'd start with a bite to the ear, but in this case I'd likely nibble a tire. 

Here is a tiny peek at my prized vintage paper mach rabbit collection which is on display in the studio all year round. 

We've been chipping away an hour a night on "home stuff". We're currently painting trim and walls. The darker walls and dark trim really balance things and make our pastels pop. I can't wait to finish and share some pics with you guys. We've been moving things around and creating some happy vignettes.

Here's a little peek of a shelf in the kitchen. That's a Cake decorating tip used as a holder for a vintage inspired flash card. 

We've been cooking some yummy meals and Aaron has been baking. These are some of our favorite banana nut muffins. 

Mostly we've been working on lots of orders, but we did manage to finish up this piece! It has been on the back burner for far too long. We chipped away at it for the longest time and finally finalized the details. We love how it turned out. It may be my favorite diecut to date! It's in the shop now and we've got it on sale for a special introductory price, which lots of peeps have taken advantage of already. If you're interested it will be on sale until very very late tonight.

We had our first flash sale last week over on Instagram, and as a result lots of donuts will be off to happy new homes this week!! So fun!

Popped into Target the other day and hit up the dollar spot! Although I only walked away with one thing this time…this adorable little file folder thingie. It opens accordion style and has tabbed sections. Perfect for holding all my little bits of ephemera and cute papers that I've got waiting to be added to art journal pages or other mixed media and crafty projects. 

Oh and on the weekend I shared this on Insta and Facebook. My sweet friend Court featured me on her blog for her #GirlCrushFRYday . I was so flattered and had fun answering her great questions. You gotta check out her blog. It is sooooo great. 

Last thing I'll mention...We're presently finalizing some details, but if you are in the NYC area…stay tuned. We will be teaching an Art Journaling class very very soon! 

Thanks for popping in!!

xo Jenny…and Aaron says hi! 

Vintage Style Spun Cotton Easter Cupcake Toppers

This is a super cute and very easy tutorial for all of you who love Vintage Easter collectibles and cupcakes! I'm thinking I just roped in a sizable audience with that opener. 

Homemade toppers are great, because even if you're not a baker, you can take a handful of bakery bought cupcakes and make them all your own by popping these in. Me and Aaron made these in an afternoon with very few supplies. We modeled them after some of our favorite collectibles.

And these here are just some of my favorite vintage toppers. They were a gift from a dear friend. I love the packaging! And yes, they were never opened. 

These right here are what we modeled ours after. The chicks crack me up. They actually have bangs! They look like surfers or skaters. 

We were so thrilled to find these spun cotton balls. They're exactly what we needed. They're from a great company called Spunnys. And I can't say enough about Nicolas at Spunnys...what great customer service, and fast shipping, and great prices too. I know we will be using Spunnys for lots of projects in the future. And the mullberry paper flowers are from Mullberry Bear, which has a great selection! 

Here is what you will need:

 Spun cotton balls (30mm)

Mullberry paper flowers (1 3/4")

party picks or toothpicks

assorted patterned papers

heavy duty crepe paper (or patterned paper)

all purpose glue

acrylic paint

ultra fine tip sharpie

pencil

scissors

xacto knife

paint brushes

circle paper punch 

1 white or yellow feather

We had a styrofoam food tray that worked perfectly as a place to keep our toppers while working. We just turned it upside down, and poked holes. First thing we did was to paint our balls with acryclic paint. We chose a pale yellow for the chicks and a creamy white for the bunnies. Once they were dry we drew the faces. First with pencil so that there would be guidelines for our sharpie. Tip: drawing on flat acrylic paint will dry up the tip of the sharpie, so keep a piece of scrap paper handy so that you can periodically scribble to get the ink flowing again.

Next we drew some ears on crepe paper, and some beaks on chipboard. (notice the beaks have two points...one of the points will stick into the spun cotton ball). We used the chipboard as is, no need to paint it. The ears we drew as one shape, rather than two separate ears. The part where the two ears meet will fit into a slot on the spun cotton ball. Cut out your ears and beaks and set aside. 

Next, using a sharp xacto knife we made slices for our ears and beaks. Be very careful here...you just want to poke the blade in and gently wiggle it to give enough space for the ears and beaks to slide in.

Now slide your ears and beaks into their respective slots. It takes a little work to get them in just right. Once they're in, using a detail brush, add a thin line of glue along the front and back to secure them. We love Aleene's because it dries fast, and clear!

Next up are the little "outfits". For your chick hats, cut out circles, then cut the circle in half, roll into a hat shape and glue the end to keep it in place.

For the collars, punch circles from patterned papers and pair them with contrasting colored paper flowers. And if you are giving your chicks the funny bangs you will need a white or yellow feather.

Cut a tiny bundle of feather and glue it inside the front of your hat. Then glue the hats onto the chicks.

Now poke holes in the centers of your flowers and paper circles and glue them together. Then push the doubled collar up the pick and glue to the ball. 

And you are finished!

Since we wanted a forever spot for these toppers we made some faux cupcakes from air dry clay. They're painted pink and creamy white,  and the tops are sprinkled with clear crystal glitter.

We hope you enjoyed this little tutorial! Now tht we've made these you can bet we will be making little characters for all seasons and holidays! If you make some of your own, we'd love to see pics! Thanks for joining us! 

If you enjoyed this tutorial you may love our book!

Happy Spring & Easter!

xo Jenny & Aaron