events

Letterpress Craft Night Recap

Last week we had our letterpress craft night! It was a really great night. We were able to donate all the money from the tickets to our local community preschool. A huge thanks to my friend Rebecca Wright who planned the event. Over 50 people attended and we had a great time eating and learning about letterpress. Also a big thanks to all the brands who donated items for the gift bags! They were really good (see below.)

Andrea Pimental was our caterer.  She impressed everyone with homemade oreos and Mexican-inspired salads. Our new Craft Night logos (designed by the amazing Clayton Thompson) were printed on canvas tote bags which held all the sponsored swag.

Coatt sent over a few delicate necklaces with gold dots and dashes that spelled out words and phrases in morse code. Ours came with words like “yeehaw” and “lucky.” And Hello Merch supplied every excited attendee with their own Champ Sweatshirt.

The Succulence, an adorable local succulent supplier that also offers classes and landscaping services, sent over 50+ mini plants for us hand out. We planted them in magnetic pods from Urbio, an awesome Bay Area startup that specializes in modular organization.

Photojojo, who also happens to be our neighbor, made sure everyone received a Tokyo Dreamer camera strap. Made of durable vegan leather, these are strong enough to hold SLRs, DSLR’s and their big ‘ol lenses. Ps: check out their awesome Phoneography 101 class.

Finally, Paper Source donated all the paper and envelopes we used for the letterpress demonstration. Their Luxe paper line notecards are my favorite for letterpressing. And their envelopes are the best (and come in amazing colors.)

We’d like to say a huge thank you for everyone who attended – and to all of our wonderful sponsors! We’re in the process of coordinating more Craft Nights this month. So stay tuned for the announcements!

Photos by Paul Ferney

Epic Playdate

Last weekend we went to Santa Barbara to participate in a big Hyundai Epic Playdate Event with a bunch of other bloggers: Oh Joy, Dooce, Mighty Girl, Yes to Hoboken, Girls Gone Child, and How to be a Dad. It was AWESOME. I am totally stealing a lot of these ideas for future activities. What I liked about them is it was all about participating. You didn’t watch stuff happen, you got to do it yourself. The kids went from one activity to the next and were so happy. Moses kept saying to me, “This is the best day ever!”  There was giant beachball volleyball, balloon sculptures, interactive sand art installation. One of my favorite activities is when they gave us a bunch of tin foil and made tin foil warrior costumes for a giant whipped cream battle. The kids loooooooved it. They also had paper rockets where you make a rocket out of paper and masking tape and then shot them off see here. I hosted a giant bubble activity where everyone made giant bubbles with hula hoops. It was really really amazing. The best part was the end of the day when we walked down to the beach and saw these amazing tents we were going to sleep in overlooking the ocean. They had real beds in them! Everyone gathered around the campfire and they brought in Brett Dennen to play some music. I sat there next to the fire and listened to music while Moses played night games nearby and Roman snuggled in my lap until he fell asleep. Definitely an Epic Playdate. Thank you to the team at FM and Hyundai for such a special day. It was perfect.

Photos by David Crowther for Hyundai

This post is brought to you by The New Santa Fe from Hyundai.

Anthropologie Craft Night

UPDATE: Craft Nights are FULL! I can’t wait to see you guys there!

We had so much fun at the last Anthropologie craft night that I’m hosting one again in Berkeley, California in a few weekson November 12th. I would love for you to join us. We are going to be making homemade Christmas Crackers. Not the kind you eat, but the kind that pop when you open them and they have little prizes inside. I’m super excited to teach this craft and and Carte Fini, my favorite crepe paper source, has donated their amazing paper for us to use.  If you are in the Bay Area and can come, I’d love to see you there!

Anthropologie Craft Night

Last night was the craft night I hosted at Anthropologie. It was a really fun event. Thank you to everyone for coming out and a special thanks to Anthropologie for having us. Also a big thank you to Carte Fini for supplying us with their awesome crepe paper. Here are some peeks of some of the materials we prepared for the craft night. We made these crepe paper floral party hats (see tutorial here) and Carte Fini generously offered to supply us with crepe paper. It is honestly the most beautiful crepe paper I’ve ever seen. It is made in Italy and the quality and amazing collection of colors is fantastic (they even have ombre paper!) The rolls are enormous (they are double or triple the size of the cheap stuff.) I’m officially obsessed with the stuff. Besides prepping the crepe paper. We also gave out little muslin bags to hold some of the supplies so I had some custom stamps made to add the Oh Happy Day logo. I’ve never tried stamping bags before and the process was so easy. For the instructions I really wanted to do something on my letterpress. (There are some perks for having your own letterpress!) First we made little watercolor paint splats (they looked like little polka dots) and then I printed the instructions on my letterpress with a deep impression.

See more photos from the event after the jump.

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Anthropologie Event

I am so excited to be partnering up with Anthropologie to host a craft night on August 30th here in San Francisco. We are going to be making floral party hats and I’ll share all my tips and tricks for working with crepe paper. The event is free but there are only 20 spots available. You can register by emailing anthroevents@anthropologie.com I hope to see you there!