Really fun Earth Day craft!  Don’t buy more crayons – just ‘reuse’ the ones you have that are broken!  Great for gifts and just for fun

Find more awesome craft ideas on our facebook page at: www.facebook.com/monamelisadesigns

Ladybug (makes 2 snacks)
1 red apple
2 grapes
2 toothpicks
raisins
yogurt
Twizzlers Pull-Aparts for antennae

*Cut the apple in half and attach the grape ‘head’ with a toothpick to the top. Add yogurt spots and put raisins on top of the yogurt. Peel apart 2 antennae and put them next to the head. Munch and enjoy!

Butterfly (number of snacks varies)
1 peeled orange
dried strawberrie pieces
raisins
Twlzzlers Pull – Aparts for antennae

*Peel several oranges and divide them into halves. Separate each half into sections with 2 segments each. Being careful not to pull the segments completely apart, pull each segment partially apart, starting from the inside where the seeds are, and going toward the outside where the peel was. Leave each set of orange segments on a paper plate and give to each child. Have each youngster add 2 short lengths of string licorice to resemble the butterfly’s antennae. Give them some raisins and strawberry pieces to decorate the wings

WE WOULD LOVE FOR YOU TO POST SOME PHOTOS OF YOUR KIDDOS MAKING AND EATING THESE CREEPY, CRAWLY SNACKS! POST TO OUR FACEBOOK PAGE AND LET US KNOW HOW IT WENT!

The kick in the pants we needed came in the form of paperwork!  We HAD to fill out our copyright paperwork, along with our LLC operating agreement and uh oh!  we didn’t have a name or logo.  So, to work we went.  Melissa worked on the logo and I started trying to think of something creative for a name.

We knew for the logo we wanted something bright and a bit girlie – being that we are both girls at heart – and we wanted something to include our love for what we are doing and the art component as well.  We went through many color choices, fonts, and styles but eventually came up with the heart and palette design that you see above.  Melissa was such the perfectionist and she tweaked every letter and color and did most of the lettering by hand because she couldn’t find a font that she LOVED.

Once she had the logo, I started thinking of something clever and creative to call our new business.  I wanted something that combined our names but again, took into account the art component.  Something that emphasized FINE art – the high quality things that we were producing was also high on my list.  I started listing all of the classis artists and art pieces that I could think of and BANG - Mona Lisa – it hit me!  Our names combined together nicely – Melisa and we added the Mona at the beginning of the name.

The hard part was getting it to roll off of the tongue and get people who didn’t know about us to say our name properly, with the  emphasis on the right part of the word. SOOOO…..we decided that if we capitalized the beginning of the name MELisa that people would say it properly – Mona MELisa (Mohnah Mel-eesa).

Whenever we tell people what the name of our business is, they always comment – ‘oh that’s a cool name.  Do you sell art?’  It’s important to us that when people hear our name, they associate it with what we do, even if they have never heard of us, which, because we are a small business, most people haven’t – LOL! 

Try to be creative when choosing your logo and name.  Use colors, designs, fonts and words that you LOVE since you are going to have to live with your choices for awhile, especially if you want to build a brand around the logo you create.  Try all kinds of different twists on your name, combinations of different words that describe your business and get feedback from others on what they see and feel when they look at your logo and read your name. 

Here’s to a WONDERFUL logo, the PERFECT business name and the HEAP of success that both will create!!!

I consider myself a fairly intuitive person.  Within a few minutes of meeting someone, I can usually get a read on them and can determine how I feel about them and get a basis for if I would want to spend time with them or not.  I will say that I am not 100% correct (oh how much time and aggravation that would save me – sigh!) but most times, I have a person pegged.  Call it intuition or maybe I am calling into use my psychology degree, but whatever it is, it WORKS for me.

I am by nature, logical to a fault as well.  Sometimes these 2 characteristics work well together and sometimes they clash horribly.

I am happy to say that in the creation and constant development of Mona MELisa Designs, they have both been of great benefit to me and my partnership with Melissa.  People downplay intuition in business, especially when a woman is the one ‘feeling’ something.  We are often taught to ignore those little voices and our spiritual guidance and pay attention only to numbers, contracts, legalities, etc.  I think both are extremely important and if you listen to both little voices in your head (assuming you only have 2 – LOL!) that you CAN be successful and that your business can feel right in your heart and on paper.

When I tell people that Melissa and I had never met when we decided to go into business together I get lots of different responses.  Most are surprised and I get the feeling that they think it was a risky proposition, which I guess it was, but I never saw it that way.

I always felt a connection with her in our dealings.  I felt that she ‘got’ me and what I wanted from her when I was ordering artwork from her Baby Duck Boutique business.  She was open and honest with me, good at responding, a serious businesswoman with all of her paperwork filed in all of the right places and she was a good mom.  She was a good communicator and creative beyond all belief and I feel like I ‘got’ where she was coming from.  It was really a serendipidous relationship.

I also REALLY loved her work as an artist (as is proven by my friends and family having several pieces of her work displayed in their houses!) and was heartbroken when she told me that she was going to have to close her business because she wasn’t making any money.  Like any artist and small business owner, she did what she loved and spent MORE time charging LESS money than she should have.

I suggested some things to her to keep her going – like maybe mass producing her work and having it printed instead of doing it by hand.  I had a detailed idea in my head of how she could go about it and so….I emailed her and told her what I thought.  She came back to me asking me to be her partner in all of this.  Me, the UBER logical gal didn’t hesitate before I told her ‘yes’.  I truly knew this would work because of that ‘feeling’ of calmness and ultimately the vision of success that I could feel and see when we agreed to work together.

Now, I’m not saying you go based ENTIRELY on warm-fuzzy feelings of pie-in-the-sky.  We made sure we filed all of the right paperwork with the state and that we have a solid operating agreement, based on this one from northwestregisteredagent.com.

LLC Sample Operating Agreement 1

Like I said, we are both BUSINESSwomen so we know what ‘i’s to dot and ‘t’s to cross but we also know the value of using our other talents to investigate different paths when we are presented with a fork in the road. 

How many times in life have we kicked ourselves for not listening to that annoying little voice in the back of our minds when it told us to’ proceed with caution’ or ‘run away’ or ‘just say no’?  And why did we ignore these feelings?  Because things looked good ‘on paper’ or because they ‘made so much sense’?

Ultimately no one but YOU can choose the right partnership for your business but I am here to tell you that you don’t have to rely on either the mind or the heart exclusively to decide, use both, listen to both.  Mona MELisa Designs is living proof that the recipe for a successful partnership and business model includes a little bit of everything that we as women have at our disposal.

We Offer the Most Unique and Customized Children’s Wall Art in the Industry!

Mona MELisa Designs is a company that has been several years in the making.  After owning their own child-related businesses for several years, Melissa and Lisa met via a virtual baby shower where Melissa won a gift from Lisa’s company being raffled during the shower.  They became fast internet friends and began working together to create a line of customized children’s growth charts and canvas wall art for Lisa’s online business.  As they collaborated on this line of products, they realized they had stumbled onto a unique business idea which would allow them to bring their amazing, custom children’s artwork to the world.  With Melissa’s artistic abilities and using the unique children’s characters from Lisa’s product lines, In December 2009, Mona MELisa Designs was born!    

Mona MELisa Designs offers their customers the most unique and customized children’s growth charts, wall murals and name signs in the marketplace.  By allowing customers to choose different color schemes to fit any room décor, add names to any of the growth charts or name signs and choose customized characters and features for each growth chart, wall mural or name sign, each child gets to display and own a unique masterpiece!  Customers can choose from different hair, eye and skin colors for each character featured on their chosen piece of artwork and in this way, the artwork is special to each child who receives it.

Melissa Crescitelli - Artist and Owner, Mona MELisa Designs

My name is Melissa and I love to create original, one of a kind, unique art that will be treasured in homes for many years. I graduated from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale in computer design, but have always had a knack for painting and being crafty. After my nieces were born a few years ago, I got an itch for creating personalized things to go in their bedrooms. Upon the birth of my own child, the joy of creating art that was not found in your everyday store was simply wonderful. It all started when she was kicking me while I was painting the wall mural in her room during pregnancy. I knew that very moment that I wanted to create and paint art for babies and kids that add the special touch we are all searching for.

Lisa Smith - CFO and Owner, Mona MELisa Designs

I am Lisa and I am so happy to be working with Melissa on this amazing journey we have started!  I have owned and managed my own online children’s boutique for the past 3 years and am excited to take a new step into something much bigger.  This company has been ‘born’ out of a desire to create unique and custom wall art that cannot be found anywhere else; we are doing something that is NOT being done in the marketplace.  Our designs are one-of-a-kind and completely customizable for the child it is being purchased for.  Once you browse our site you will see the difference in our artwork and understand why we are so excited to share it with the world!