People Who Sparkle: Johnny Cupcakes

Do you know the Cupcake Man, the Cupcake Man the Cupcake Man? Do you know the Cupcake Man who lives on Newbury Street? If you don’t- its your lucky day…cuz I’m about to dish the dirt!

Johnny Cupcakes is one of our entrepreneur super heros…similar to He-Man. Jodie and I have a whole buffet of dreams and sitting down with Mr. Cupcake and picking his genius cupcake batter filled brain is HIGH on the list. Johnny doesn’t actually make cupcakes. He makes tshirts and sells them at his three stores, that look like bakeries - he sells loads of them! In fact Johnny Cupcakes was just named one of Inc. magazines fastest growing companies (if you don’t read Inc. magazine…that’s a HUMONGOUS SIZED deal). Here’s the skinny: Johnny started his company kindve as a joke right after high school. He was given the nickname Johnny Cupcakes (think Johnny Appleseed, Johnny Pretty Much Anything Sounds Good…right?). As a joke, Johnny made a shirt with Johnny Cupcakes on it and WHAMMO…everybody wanted one. Fast forward 9 years he has literally built a tasty cupcake clothing empire. Johnnys shirts are crazy cute and his stores look like bake shops. PLEASE read his story here, he does a much better job of telling the tale than I do:

How Johnny whipped up his batch of awesomeness: His Story

Ten ways Johnny Cupcakes makes the world sparkle (in no particular order):

1. His brand was built from creativity and straight up love of the product.

2. He encourages people to take chances and get off their butts! College kids are always told to take internships at mega corporations rather than turning their own dreams into realities…I know I was. Johnny speaks at colleges and gives kids the confidence they may need to take the leap and do their OWN thing.

3. He hasn’t sold out to a corporation and you can’t find his shirts in malls.

4. He had ADD…. Can I get a holler for the hyper kids (like me!)!!!

5. He was born in 1982- so were we.

6. He has been able to employ his mom, dad, sister and friends!

7. He has his very own Pee Wee Herman suit and bow tie…complete with white platforms.

8. Everybody loves Johnny once they hear about him! Jodie just asked a total stranger she met on Johnnys facebook fan page to bring us two copies of “The Cupcake Chronicles”, Johnnys newslettery type deal. This boy, Mike, met us a coffee shop here in Chicago just because that’s how nice Johnny’s fans are and how much they want to spread the word. Check out the pics of our chronicles below!

9. He hosts events to get to know his fans/customers. We’re obviously a fan of parties….so is he J

10. He’s irresistibly delicious!

Peace, Love & Glitter,

Ellie

P.S. Glittermammaz, If you haven’t voted for us in the Martha Stewart Dreamers into Doers competition yet….GET ON IT WOMAN! Thank you kindly.

CLICK HERE TO VOTE.

OH Snap!

Back to school shopping was always a REALLY big deal in my house...lets be honest, shopping in general was a big deal :-) My sister, Maggie, and I each got our own shopping days with my mom. There was no two timing us when it came to back to school shopping. Mom devoted two days to each of us. One day for supplies and one day for clothes. Come to find out much later in life (like a few weeks ago) my dad was actually the driving force behind this shoptastic yearly event! He thought it was important to start getting us excited for school well before the year actually started. My favorite of the two days was always the supply shopping day. I still love stopping in the school supply aisle at Target and picking up a new binder or a bran new pack of multi colored Sharpie pens. I think girls still get pretty pumped to buy their b2s goodies.

I nearly stopped in my tracks the other day when I saw a little girl and her binder. I asked her if I could see what she had done and she was more than willing to show me! I told her that I was going to blog about her cute idea and that she just may start a b2s 2009 trend. I've tried to recreate exactly what she did...check it out and try it yourself!

1. You need all the colorful elastic headbands you can find laying around...I have about 10 million.

2. Grab a binder, notebook or even text book!

3. Crisscross ten or so headbands around your binder. Make it extra funky and crazy or make a pattern.

4. Tuck writing utensils and other commonly used supplies behind the bands! Totally cute. Totally practical. Totally cheap!

For your viewing pleasure....

Happy Wednesday everybody. Hope you are all having a great week. I am in Michigan and having a great time babysitting my niece, GiGi. And chillaxin with my sister and her huz. Wanted to post a few pics from two of last weekends events. Theses events were "Big Glitter Events" and really busy...which means we didn't have time to take lots of pictures. Enjoy the few we have and....

Stay Sparkly, Ellie

"Peace with Reese".... an extravagant batmitzvah put on by our new fave city event planner, Bambi! Check out WWW.BCREVENTS.COM to see her work...this woman knows how to throw a bash! She didn't miss a detail. The guests all dressed in their 1960's best and looked amazing. This is such a great party theme!

Update: Sept 4 2009

Just got some pics from the photog at "Peace with Reese"! AMAZINGNESS. I have one website for all of you.... WWW.MATTPOWERSPHOTOGRAPHY.COM Matt captured some great moments. If you really want to be "wowed" go to his site and drool over his portfolio!

okay from here on are my amateur no so masterpiecey pics!

One of our superstar Glitter Girlz....MEOSHA! how beautiful is she?!!!!

"Make A Jamaica" Charity Event. The weather wasn't exaclty "jamaica-y" but it was a super fab event! This event was a benefit for Little Angels and we had the opportunity to provide all the kids activities...even for the boys! painting, hair, t-shirt design... It was our first large event in Elgin and we met some totally awesome kids and parents!

I need to get my sparkly little booty on the road back to the Chi! xoxo.