Charonel Designs

This month's interview is with a fun, feminine, beachy kind of shop. Sue and Elissa have an endless amount of items in their shop with a little something for everyone. Read all about them and Charonel Designs.

Etsy Paper: Tell us a little about yourself.
Charonel Designs: We are a mother daughter team that lives in sunny Texas. We have 2 furry assistants (our cats Cheeto and JJ) who like to supervise and help us with our shop projects. Sue operated a wedding cake business for 10 years and Elissa used to be a stamping demonstrator and still works full time as a business analyst. When we aren’t crafting, we love to go to antique shows and visit fun little towns all over Texas. We come from a creative family and inherited some of our creative ability from Sue’s mother who was an artist and teacher. 

    

Etsy Paper: When did you open your shop on Etsy?

Charonel Designs: Our shop was created when Sue’s wedding clients expressed interest in having custom wedding invitations and favors created for them. After Sue closed her wedding cake business in 2009, we decided to migrate our paper creations to an online store and we found Etsy.com.

Cake Bunting

     Etsy Paper: Tell us about your shop.

     Charonel Designs: We create invitations, table numbers, favor boxes and gift tags for parties, weddings and special events. Wedding cake and cupcake toppers are a favorite too.

     

Etsy Paper: How did your shop get its name?

Charonel Designs: We used the family name Charon and added the first two letters of Elissa’s name to come up with Charonel and then added the Designs.

Etsy Paper: What inspires you?

    Charonel Designs: We are inspired by our many travels together and apart. We love the beach and the ocean and spent many years in Florida. Traveling to the Caribbean is a favorite past time and we draw a lot of inspiration from the islands and the wonderful tropical colors and themes. Our tropical table numbers and gift tags are some of our most popular designs. Sometimes we are inspired by wedding trends and wedding cakes. 

Tropical Gift Tags

Etsy Paper: Is there a certain color or motif that you are repeatedly drawn to?
Charonel Designs: We are always drawn to tropical motifs, the beach, the ocean, seashells. Paris and shabby chic are favorite go to styles as well. We also like creating fun projects with a Texas or cowboy theme, naturally influenced by where we live. Aqua and pink are favorite colors we are drawn to. Roses seem to be a re-occurring theme as well, inspired by the roses in our garden.

Rose Favor Box

Etsy Paper: What is your favorite technique/ your "specialty"?
Charonel Designs: One of our specialties is paper shoes decorated with bits of lace, buttons and vintage trims. We created a paper shoe one Halloween for a candy favor. We decided to try decorating these paper shows like little Marie Antoinette shoes. We found vintage lace, trims and velvet flowers at an estate sale and local fabric shops and started to incorporate them into our shoe designs. We once had someone order 75 of them for New Year’s Eve masquerade ball, those were extremely fun to do!

Etsy Paper: How did you learn your craft?

Charonel Designs: Art has always been in the blood for both of us. Sue’s mother was an artist and teacher and always had a creative project going on from sewing, drawing, crocheting or china painting. Elissa started stamping when a friend invited her to a stamping class. She soon caught the bug and became a demonstrator teaching classes for 3 years. Through that experience, she learned techniques for working with paper. This transitioned easily into making paper items for brides. Sue has always loved to cook and bake and always took creative classes like pottery and painting. When she lost her job, she started a business making wedding cakes. When she closed the cake business she started to help Elissa with the paper creations. 

Etsy Paper: What is your first crafting memory?

Charonel Designs: One of Sue’s favorite memories was when she was a little girl, she made 120 Easter hats for family members at a family reunion. They were made from paper plates and roses fashioned from colored Kleenex.

One of Elissa’s favorite memories is her grandmother teaching her how to crochet and also decorating her bicycle for an Easter parade using colored tissue paper roses.

Etsy Paper: Do you have a special space for your crafting, or does the kitchen table do double duty?

Charonel Designs: We have a craft room in our house that’s used to store the many stamps, packages of paper and spools of ribbon we use. But we do the actual crafting usually in the living room or at the kitchen table. We enjoy watching Hallmark movies when we create! We generally spread out for as long as we need and then clean it all up when we are done!

Etsy Paper: What number is the most items you've made in one sitting?

Charonel Designs: We had an order from a corporate client for 3000 business card holders. Every single one was cut and embossed with a leaf impression by hand. It took us 4 weeks to get it done working nights and weekends!

Business Card Holder

    Sue and Elissa sure do make a great team and it shows in their shop's items. By the way, Charonel Designs has 927 reviews with a 5-star average, that speaks volumes. 

Until next time,

Jenni

Etsy Paper

Team Captain