Project Kid had the extreme pleasure of working with J. Crew and their mini-me brand, crew cuts on a super fun craft event to celebrate their September 2018 relaunch. If you know Project Kid and our aesthetic, you’d hopefully recognize that crew cuts is like the clothing sister to our lil craft brand. Bright colors, sweet shapes, and a little bit of humor.

J. Crew’s relaunch campaign was called Meet My Crew, celebrating the people in all of our lives that make up our beloved trusted crews. And when it comes to families, there’s no better crew than the folks that live within the same four walls.

When tasked with creating kids’ craft activities for an iconic clothing and accessory brand, we had to consider a bunch of things. First, the projects have to make sense with the style and the message of the campaign. So making a bird feeder, for example, would have not have flown (pun intended). Also, you can create things to accent their products, but not compete with them. So I’m glad I researched their accessory line before I went to them with my fun pom-pom necklace idea. Here’s what we came up with…

COLORFUL PATCHES

Mom and daughter making patches

Crew cuts wasn’t currently selling anything like this, but there were so many ways to use them with their products…on jean jackets, backpacks, or hats. We started off creating the felt patches beginning with 4 basic shapes…a square, a half-circle, a rounded rectangle (think Pac-man ghost), and a triangle.

Circles and squares and colors OH MY!

We brainstormed different icons that could be made with these simple shapes. So that the kids didn’t have to cut up all of the little pieces, we pre-cut all of the pieces and displayed in sort of a toppings-bar style buffet.

“Toppings” buffet for felt patches!

This was our process of planning colors and shapes for the patches

COLORED GLASSES

Riffing off of the “seeing the world through rose-colored glasses” idea, we gave the kids these cool blue, red, yellow, and green lensed glasses to decorate and wear. They had a real Elton John 70s vibe and the kids looked amazing in them. (These are the cardboard glasses we used, but we punched out the centers on all of them.)

Glasses in the making!

MEET MY CREW PHOTO BOOTH

Clare, me and Bridgid…my beloved craft crew!

What’s a party without a photo booth? Made with just grosgrain ribbon and gold paper, this backdrop had a cool, geometric vibe.

FLOOR TILE PROMPTS

We had vinyl floor tiles made to match the colors of the collection. We wanted it to feel like confetti was dropped from a giant down onto the floor.

And every so often, there was a circle that gave an instruction, like “floss like you mean it” “freeze like a flamingo” “believe you can fly” or “high-five your crew”. We wanted the kids to literally stop in their tracks and do something silly, sentimental, or just plain fun.

FUN DECOR!

Just to add some whimsical decor, we also made these colorful panels to match the color story of the collection. You can bet these will be tiling a wall of my studio!

January 3, 2019| Everyday Crafts, Family Bonding, Games & Activities, Jewelry and Fashion, Parties