Customer Gallery
Did we ever tell you that we love when you send us photos of yourself wearing our stuff? We do, we do! We want to see how YOU wear Crywolf.
Jen in Leopard Vneck
It comes as no surprise that most of our fans are very stylish and fashionably forward people. Don’t even try to deny how slick & cool you are. Show it off!
Ben in Hipster Werewolf
Send yours to crywolfclothing@gmail.com and we will post them on our Flickr and to the Customer Gallery on our site!
Frugal Fashion Week
This past week was the first ever Frugal Fashion Week in Toronto and on Saturday we set up shop at the Drake where they had a shop/brunch/fashion show happening. I can’t seem to get the word Frugalista out of my head now which isn’t good because I think it’s a terrible terrible word. Same goes for the word fashionista which conjures up strong feelings of vile disgust in both of us, mostly because of this song which we heard every day at the CNE last year. Enjoy:
Anyhoos, this was our setup:
Space was tight but we managed to make enough room. We had a few samples of BRAND NEW DESIGNS which were a hit and will be up on the site soon! VERY exciting!
All in all, a good day. It was my birthday wknd and I got to spend it with my closest pals which is all I really wanted! Love you all. Is it seriously almost August? Time is flying. WHAT HAPPENED TO SUMMER? Our next event is the CNE which starts August 21st. We’ll keep you posted on that.
xo!
crywolf representing w. Wanderlei Silva
Hanging with the axe murderer!
Happy Canada Day!
Hope you’re enjoying the sunshine today (we see that your tan is coming along quite nicely)! In celebration of Canada day we’re offering FREE SHIPPING in Canada all day today. ENJOY! And for our American friends, we will be offering free shipping to the states on July 4th!
We also just added a new product to our line, the Candyland Tank Top. Just in time for summer.
This lightweight and loose tank will keep you cool on the hottest of summer days. Featuring a bitten cupcake and his very shocked soft-serve pal. Only $20 CAD!
Thanks for stopping by. Now turn on the bbq and set off some illegal fireworks.
Mommy, where do crywolf designs come from?
Today we thought we would give you a little glimpse into the process of getting from a drawing to a shirt-ready design. It’s a question we get from time to time. Since all of our designs pretty much start off as drawings/sketches, there’s a bit of work involved.
I couldn’t really explain our design process even if I tried because it’s always different for each of us. We do usually come up with a few loose ideas for themes/designs and divvy them up. As with any creative process, having some direction helps but sometimes ideas are just born spontaneously and you roll with them. Drawings are sketched out in pencil first and then inked. Solid black lines are a hell of a lot easier to work with on the computer than pencil lines, and are essential when creating an image for silkscreening. I’ll use one of our older designs, Siamese Geisha, as an example.
This is an inked drawing scanned in and ready to be digitally modified/edited. (Crywolf Tip: A cheap solution if you don’t have a scanner is to just take a photo of your drawing with a digital camera). Depending on the design, sometimes we draw them in sections and assemble them digitally. Doing so will allow you to play around with composition. In this case, I drew the geisha head fairly big and ended up having to draw the other parts on separate sheets of paper and scanning them in separately.
At this stage we do some adjustments in Photoshop and Illustrator, smoothing out the lines and maybe even erasing or adding to the drawing if something isn’t working to our liking and we end up with something that is usually pretty close to the final design. This part of the process usually takes longer than it took to do the actual drawing. We collaborate on our designs throughout different stages so what we start out with isn’t always what we end up with. That’s about it! Once a design is finalized it’s easy to play around with colour combinations and test out different options.
The above would have been a 10 colour silkscreen which we would have been insane to print, I was just playin! After colour is added, the file gets separated into layers and ready to print onto acetate. Then we coat the screen, expose the images (which is a whole other process) and then we print your favorite shirt in the world!
Seminars and FB contest!
This morning we hit the road early (too early) for an Innovation Forum hosted by Enterprise Toronto. It was a full day of seminars based around developing innovative ideas into successful business ventures. The first speaker was W. Daniel Mothersill, President of National Angel Capital Organization and did a thorough presentation on specifics that investors/financiers want and are expecting when you pitch to them. Interesting information coming straight from the source and good to know for future ventures. It may not have been wholly relevant to our position and size in the business world or the type of financing we would be looking for but he definitely laid out some fundamentals that any structure of business can apply. The rest of the day seemed geared towards inventors and new technological developments and boring powerpoint presentations were making us restless, so we decided to split. We felt the relief that one naturally feels upon exiting a stuffy lecture hall. Junefest (whatever it was) was happening just outside but we were too early to catch it.
Us and our pals at the seminar. JK!
BTW, you should become our facebook friend!!!
Why? Because every evening for the rest of June we’ll be posting a little trivia question and the winner gets our special discount code for FREE SHIPPING for the rest of June. Yesterday’s question was to guess the creature:
Even though I insist that they are Furbies, these lil dudes are actually Honduran White Bats (Ectophylla Alba). Congrats to Shannon Stephens.
Questions will be of the same nature: fun, weird and probably useless trivia. Add us and play for your chance to W-I-N!
Website MAKEOVER!
Have you had a chance to visit our new site? We gave it a slight makeover (from super cool to EVEN COOLER) and now there are a bunch of new features to check out:
- make a wish list
- create a customer account for return visits!
- pay direct with your credit card on our 100% secure site
- introducing paypal EXPRESS for a speedier checkout!
- a Quick Search function if you’re looking for something specific
- discount codes!
Speaking of discount codes, we are offering FREE SHIPPING for the month of June. All you have to do is join the mailing list to receive the special code. BTW - that’s what rules about being on the mailing list, you’ll get in on exclusive deals/discounts!
In the Fun Department, yesterday I decided to bike up to the Aurora Street Festival. On the way up I dropped off some custom buttons to our friend Connie. Check out her health/nutrition blog for some health tips and really amazing all-natural recipes!
I didn’t get hit by a car and the rain held off so all-in-all it was a good little trek. We’re definitely going to hire this guy for our next show:
He should really have a real monkey though! So, what did YOU get up this weekend?
Just another rainy afternoon on the Danforth!
On Saturday afternoon we went to drop off some shipment to our new retailer Drysdale & Co on the Danforth. It was raining very hard but we still had good spirits! The shop was too cute, and we ended up browsing it for a good half hour.
We snapped a few pics before we left.
one good thing about a rainy day is rainboots!
us in front of the awesome window display! thumb up!
we were colourful & happy
waiting to cross.
After that we slowly made our way through downtown traffic and checked out some art. We both aren’t huge fans of dark blues but agree that Yves Klein blue is the most soothing colour. We then proceeded to have the best lunch ever at AZN Legend (soup filled dumplings ftw!).
Yves Klein blue, but not Yves Klein. Tom Burrows @ Bau Xi
A bonus LOL for y’all:
Mr. Chang being goofy in his meowzer Tshirt
new retailer!
Just wanted to do a quick update before bed. (Leave me & my old-lady bed time alone!)
Today we dropped off some shirts to Drysdale & Co. who are now carrying Crywolf! If you’re in the east end of Toronto (107 Danforth Ave) you should definitely take a look.
I wish I had taken a shot of the inside and the lovely ladies working there. Next time! It’s a nice shop filled with a ton of great stuff. That’s what I liked most about it, that there’s such a diverse range of products. I almost had to slap my own hand to stop myself from buying something.
S’all for now! If you haven’t already, check out our freshly released Battle Royal collaboration design available for girls and guys and a couple of new accessories.
Spring '09 Clothing Show
This past weekend we set up shop once again at the Toronto Clothing Show. Thanks to those who stopped by, pretty good weekend all in all! We didn’t have internet access but were able to keep in touch via phone twittering (twitting? tweeting?). Fancy, I know. If you have twitter you should follow us if you aren’t already.
When we got there for setup we got our first look at the collaboration t-shirt (available SOON! like tomorrow!) we did with our buddies over at Pause. This meant we had very little time to sew tags! Finally, I found a secluded area with an outlet and sewed them up 15 minutes before show opening. It’s just how you gotta roll sometimes.
As usual we saw some people making very strong fashion statements. I mean, it IS the clothing show after all. Wolfie heads enforced for identity protection:
Below = photo op FAIL. It’s clearly the back Jessica Biffi’s head (Project Runway Canada, anyone? Bueller?). I just thought about how awkward it would be to be a pseudo celeb… recognizable but probably could never get into anything for free. Bummer.
Lastly, say hai to the cutest yorkie ever!:
We gladly held onto this lil gal while her mom did some shopping and <3′d every second of it. I think her name was Momo. She turned up as a blurry blob in every photo because she was scurrying around like crazy. GAH so cute.
S’all for now, folks. We’re currently working on a bunch of stuff including a new cart interface that’s going to rock butt. Tomorrow we’ll have our brand new collab shirt up for sale so check back!
