B&E Designs

Back when I was earning peanuts for a living at the advertising agency, I had to get creative as to how I was going to earn extra money. So, I teamed up with my friend and co-worker, Beth and formed 'B&E Designs.' It sounds so fancy in theory but in reality it was the two of us and a BeDazzler making t-shirts at our desks while working at the switchboard. Our job consisted solely of answering the phones for the ad agency and since we were wearing headsets, our hands were free to do anything. We were actually encouraged by our boss to bring in books, movies and anything that would keep us from spiraling into a deep dark hole of boredom.

We would buy tank tops and t-shirts, hand make stencils out of plastic and paint and BeDazzle the shirts ourselves. We were really into skulls and cupcakes at the time (this was before they blew up and got popular) and were convinced that we were the ones who had started that trend. We used to buy our tank tops at Target in packages of three and one time, after we had already stenciled a skull on it, we returned it in the package....oops! A few months after that, the whole skull and crossbones trend was suddenly everywhere and we were certain that the person who bought our package of tank tops was the head designer at like Ed Hardy or Forever 21 and we are still looking out for our residual checks. But that's another story...

Our 'mascot' at the ad agency was the skull and crossbones so we decided to make black t-shirts and stencil on the white skull design and add a few jewels on the eyes. They turned out pretty great and we started to get more attention. And by more attention, I mean we had two loyal customers. I think we sold them for like $15 each and we would take custom orders from our customers for different colors and designs. We thought we really had something going and in our heads we were the next Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor of Juicy Couture. But soon enough, our dreams were shattered when the agency decided to put on a giant craft fair. Beth and I worked our butts off to make at least 25 t-shirts (and some chocolate chip cookies to add some flair to our table) for the craft fair but didn't sell a single shirt. We couldn't even give away a dang cookie! And just like that, B&E Designs was caput! Oh well, maybe it was for the better...I'm sure the office was happy they didn't have to smell fabric paint all day anymore!