Never Cry Wolf

Ah, high school. Seems like a hundred thousand years ago now. With all the time that’s gone by, thinking about it conjures up faint and random images of faces and memories: our unstylish uniforms, crushes, the confusing feelings of adolescence, teenage angst, old friends, crazy hair and cafeteria food that we still crave for sometimes. We were brought to ponder back on high school life when we were contacted a few months ago by one of our favorite teachers, Mr. Keenan. Rose and I were never in the same class but we both had Mr. Keenan for computers. Being computer geeks, we naturally loved computer classes and the jovial and less-uptight faculty that made up the department.

The reason for the contact was that Mr. Keenan had discovered Crywolf and was really proud of what we’ve done. To quote directly: “I was showing your site to my computer classes today and telling them how I taught you nothing and you still made something of yourselves.” For the record, we made tons of funny little Turing and Foxpro programs under his tutelage, so he taught us lots. I would say our interest in computers and learning to make things on them (ie. those programs, 0’s and 1’s, basic html to make obnoxious tripod pages about ourselves, etc) was actually pretty important in shaping an interest that we would one day use to create our own online store.

We answered some interview questions for the school paper and Mr. Keenan asked if the students could use some our characters in a final Flash project. Our response: HELLS YEA! So below, we would like to present you with 3 final flash games that some students came up with. Click to play. THEY ARE SO COOL!

Crywolf Memory Game by Azra Jessa

Muffin Madness Maze! by Janelle Singh

Catch and Avoid by Montserrat Martinez Soy

We said that we were going to pick a winner but they are all so amazing that we can’t choose just one. Help us out by letting us know which one is your favorite. We’ll be putting a poll up on our facebook fan page where you can vote so do it up! The student with the most votes will get a little something extra. They worked so hard so please take a second to cast a vote.

Peas out g33ks!
xoxox

Y’all should check out our NERDSPACE! We’ve added some brand new *FREE* downloads. Grab backgrounds for your desktop, ipad, iphone, droid and blackberry. Here are our desktop backgrounds. Click to open & save in full size:

Geek out!
Go to the NERDSPACE to get them all!

xoxox

MART-TREE-OSH-KAH! (In case you weren’t sure how to pronounce it). Ever increasing in popularity, we knew we had to make our very own babushka/nesting doll/matryoshka t-shirt of our very own Chloe!

Our very own Chloe has taken on the form of this matryoshka doll! Lovely and sweet as can be. Printed with light blue fill and black outline on an athletic grey tri-blend (25% rayon, 25% polyester, 50% cotton) tshirt or with white fill and black outline on a 100% light pink vneck.

Sorry guys, this design is a gals exclusive! See the t-shirt here and the v-neck here!

We’ll leave you with this youtube vid of how nesting dolls are made. It makes me miss working in the wood shop and using a lathe!:

xoxo!

We’re happy to bring to you a bunch of new designs, just in time for Spring! The end of grey, dreary, cold days is in sight. New designs mean that a bunch of old designs are being discontinued and are now on crazy sale! Now’s your chance to grab the last of the last because once they sell out, they be gone FOREVER. Just sayin’! Check those out in our SALE section.

Not only that, but you can use code: ninjapanda for 10% off til the end of the weekend!! WOO.

Each day we are going to feature one of the new shirts to introduce them to you.

Today’s shirt is Pup In A Cup

Can you resist these eyes? Neither can we! Who’s heart doesn’t just melt over a chihuahua in a teacup? Ours do! Turn everyone around you into a pile of mush when you wear this shirt. Available in a brown print on a 100% cotton creme shirt or black print on a tri-blend (25% rayon, 25% polyester, 50% cotton) coffee tshirt.

Available for guys and gals!

Whaddya think?

Check back tomorrow for another featured design! xo!

Greg Pietersma is the maker of wonderful tin things! We met him at the CNE, a fellow vendor in the Arts & Crafts building, and have been show pals ever since. Greg has been doing what he does for a long time knows all the ropes when it comes to trade shows and being in the craft business and we always appreciate the advice he’s given us. He’s like our “trade show dad” but the cool type of dad that is also your friend. One year we made him some fun tin-related custom buttons which is only 1/4 as cool as what he made us this past holidays… Crywolf COOKIE CUTTERS!

He hand-crafted those babies for us out of our logo. They are slightly different in size, the logo part is raised so that it leaves an imprint on the cookie. SO COOL!

Rose whipped out her trusty cookie book and we looked for a recipe that seemed both practical and yummy. We aimed more for the yum factor and went for a peanut butter cookie. I figured that you usually see pb cookies with the fork crisscross imprinted on the top so they would be good for holding the imprint, but in reality it wasn’t that practical because the dough is a bit too soft and oily to actually roll out. We kind of just had to make patties and cut them out that way (flour in the cutter – crucial), which worked! They were just very fragile and mushy. In retrospect, a sugar cookie or butter cookie dough recipe would be a bit easier to work with!

The cookies were thick and as they were baking they were kind of squishing into a giant collage cookie of Crywolf logos which was cool too! A cookie is a cookie.

Final results:

NOMMMMM

Want one? You’ll just have to come out to our next show… we just might have some under the table!

xo

Here is a lil custom logo that we came up for our friend Dani. She recently started up a company called The Like Button which helps businesses enter and conquer the world of social media by providing them with affordable and care-free social networking management. Website coming soon!

She wanted a quirky looking octopus character and this is what we came up with:

This dude was fun to draw and we’re glad we could help her out. We’ll start posting more custom jobbies as they come up!

Just as a reminder, we do custom buttons and magnets! You can check out the Custom Stuff section on our website for ordering custom 1″ buttons and magnets and 2.25″ buttons. If you have your own design, great! If you don’t we can also talk about making something for you.

T-shirts/posters are also something that we occasionally take on, but since we are not set up for mass printing we have to be really selective and only take on jobs that we feel confident about. It all depends on the request and our workload. Feel free to contact us with details of what you have in mind (quantity, sizes, # of colours and a picture or description of the design if you have one) and if it’s do-able we can give you a quote.

Anyway, TGIF everyone! We’re going to bake some Crywolf cookies later today so stay tuned for a blog about how they turn out (I’m predicting yummy, adorable, and in our bellies).

xo!

As many of you know, we did our first ever Christmas One of a Kind show, the biggest Christmas craft show in North America. We’ve been hoping to get into this show for a while now and we finally did! After returning from China, we worked our butts off to prepare for the show and everything came together in the end. Thanks to all those who came and supported. Photo timez:

It wasn’t until day 2 that I remembered to bring my camera but I’m really upset because I don’t think I got a single good shot of our entire booth! I could have sworn I did but I guess I only took one on my phone so this will have to do:

We were hoping for a 10×15 but since we were on the waiting list we took what we could get and actually really lucked out by getting a corner. What I’d really like to emphasize in this photo is the beauty of vinyl flooring. In case you didn’t read about our last floor disaster during the Spring One of a Kind show you can check it out here. All I can say is vinyl flooring is  A DREAM and wood laminate flooring is FIT for the PIT (for shows, anyway).

We also bought and used a grid wall for the first time ever. It’s hard when you only have curtains for walls so these things really came in handy. You can also see some of our new stuff showcased: Crywolf baggus, kids & baby clothes and pet clothes!

AND silk screened Holiday Cards:

Our ability to amuse ourselves easily increases ten-fold when we do shows. We never fail to find it amusing that we have the exact same handwriting (when we want to). We are both experts at forging each others signatures which has come in handy more than once ifyouknowwhatimean.

If you read our blog you will know from this entry that we won 2nd place in the One of a Kind show’s exhibitor art competition. Here is our piece! (I immediately got scolded for taking photos):

We were so lucky to have had many visits by friends and family. Thanks to everyone who stopped by! We also met some really awesome fellow craftsters and made some new friends.

This is Gosia and in case you can’t tell, she is the sweetest! Here she is wearing our very own Wolfe tee. Gosia makes really beautiful paintings and sculptures of little characters. We both bought this little red hooded girl figure:

I still have to find a special place to hang her. Check out Gosia’s work and blog here. We are looking forward to doing a collaboration with her in the near future!

More visits:

Chris from Cargoh stopped by, which was really nice! Cargoh is a Canadian-based online marketplace for artists and designers to sell their stuff. Do check it out.

Jen and Michael of Sick on Sin and Orneryboy stopped by. I love this photo because clearly something funny was happening.

Cassie and baby Bennett who modeled in all of our baby clothes photos for our website.

Chris looks sad here probably because he’s a vegetarian and I offered him some smoked salmon. Chris makes some great buttons and other things too which you can check out here.

Random photo from the last day of the show. I was trying to capture the sheer mass of the lineup of people waiting to get in. I think I failed, but just take my word for it.

We met Karen at the CNE years back and it was nice to see her face!

My new thing seems to be taking photos of people when they’ve let their guard down. I like these types of photos the most, anyhow. Ghostface and mama D.

Last photo I took, my parents came down to assist us with take down which is always a super huge help and was EXTREMELY helpful this time especially because for the first time we have more boxes than can actually fit in the van! I don’t know what this means but I’m having visions of a Crywolf cube van… or maybe a Crywolf RV? A studio RV that we can print shirts in and live out of while we travel. Yea!

Anyway once again thanks to everyone who came and shout-outs to: Dani Gagnon, Jen Mahood, Stefanie Terzo & Christina Terzo Curcio, Mr. Fantin, St Robs kids, Patricia Youn, Tiffany, Aviv Zimerman, Mia, Melissa De Luca & Brett, Sarah Costa, Steph Agosta, Jean Rivard, Mrs B, Shannon & Cara, Angela Smith, Meghan D’Innocenzo, Lisa, Angela DiMaso, Marie, Geneviève Jodouin, our mums & dads.

THAT WAS LONG!
xoxoxox

Okay so for some reason I had this blog entry saved as a draft since Thanksgiving! Canadian Thanksgiving! Whups. Well better late then never, right? Here it is, our first recipe entry:

One of the things that I aspire to be good at in life is cooking & baking. I understand that takes a lot of time and practice, and time is something I seem to be wishing for a lot these days! When an occasion arises though, I like to try to make an effort to make something that I can share with family & friends. For this reason, Crywolf blog will occasionally have posts about recipes that worked out (and maybe some that don’t).

For Thanksgiving weekend I was looking for a fairly easy, no-mess, no-stress dessert recipe and I came across a Whole Foods Pumpkin Cream Cheese Truffles (I renamed them Pumpkin Cheesecake Truffles… it just sounds better) recipe on Tastespotting.com. Tastespotting is usually my #1 go-to website for recipes. Super visual, a million recipes and you can search by ingredient. I have been known to waste full hours browsing and drooling. This recipe was perfect because I knew the oven was going to be occupied with a turkey for most of the weekend and these require NO BAKING!

Here’s the recipe along with some notes I added (in colour). The recipe says it makes about 30 but that isn’t accurate… I’d say it makes more like 15 1″ balls. For two families I made two batches where I doubled the ingredients in each batch, so adjust accordingly! Better to have more then not enough.

These truffles pair pumpkin with gingersnap and graham cracker crumbs. For the best results, chill truffles until you’re ready to serve them.

Ingredients

2½ cups white chocolate chunks
1/3 cup gingersnap cookie crumbs, plus more for garnish
1/4 cup canned pumpkin purée
1/4 cup graham cracker crumbs, plus more for garnish
1 tablespoon confectioners’ sugar
1/2 teaspoon orange zest
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon (I also used some for garnish)
Pinch of fine salt
2 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup cinnamon chips (can be found at bulk barn)

Method

Melt 1/2 cup of the chocolate in a double boiler over medium-low heat or in the microwave for about 1 minute. Stir often to keep the chocolate from burning. (The stirring often is SUPER important. Like every 10 seconds to be safe. Burnt chocolate leaves chunks and will ruin your entire batch of chocolate. If you’re doing this in a glass mug or cup, BE CAREFUL when taking it out. Use an oven mitt – that b is hot!). Transfer to a large bowl. Add gingersnap crumbs, pumpkin, graham cracker crumbs, sugar, zest, cinnamon, salt and cream cheese and beat with an electric mixer until smooth. Transfer to a shallow bowl, cover and chill until just solid enough to roll into balls, about 2 hours (If you’re impatient or on a super tight schedule and possibly freaking out like I was, 30 mins in the freezer will do the trick).

Line a large sheet tray with parchment paper. Melt remaining 2 cups chocolate and transfer to a small, deep bowl (I used a mug, but a small deep bowl would have been way more convenient). Roll 1 heaping teaspoon of the pumpkin mixture into a ball in your hands, then drop into the chocolate. Working quickly, gently spoon chocolate over to coat. Using a small spoon or fork, lift the truffle out of the chocolate, shake off excess and transfer to prepared sheet tray. Dollop a bit of extra chocolate on any parts that remain exposed, then sprinkle a few gingersnap or graham cracker crumbs over the top, if you like. (I kind of freestyled here and melted some dark chocolate, poured it into the corner of a ziploc bag and cut a tiny hole in the tip of the corner – the poor gals impromptu icing dispenser – and drizzled some on top before sprinking on the cracker crumbs and a tiny bit of cinnamon). Repeat process with remaining pumpkin mixture and chocolate, then chill truffles until chocolate is completely set, about 1 hour.

ENJOY!

Nutrition

Per serving (3 truffles/63g-wt.): 290 calories (150 from fat), 16g total fat, 10g saturated fat, 15mg cholesterol, 130mg sodium, 32g total carbohydrate (0g dietary fiber, 28g sugar), 3g protein

We are sososo happy to announce that we’ve won 2nd place in the One of a Kind Exhibitor’s Art competition! Exhibitors were asked to interpret the theme of “love” in their own particular medium. See the OOAK’s blog entry about the winning pieces here.

We asked our fans on facebook to come up with some works of places/people/things/etc. that came to mind when they thought of the word LOVE. We got a lot of responses so thanks so much, you lovely fans you!

Here’s the final piece along with a description:

Our design was inspired by drawing connections from different fragments of words that combine together to create the idea of love. The words placed on each individual 1″ button (a medium commonly used for the promotion of messages, beliefs, interests and ideas) were collected from a group of random people’s interpretations of what the word love means to them. The words range from places to people, things, feelings, etc. We arranged all of the individual pieces into the iconic shape of the heart and included bits and pieces of the colour red to reiterate the idea of love. Although forming from a group of random words and ideas, the viewer is able to draw connections from the fragments and evoke their own thoughts and ideas of love.