Live Colorful Day of the Dead Crafts Featured in Parents Latina Magazine
Live Colorful Day of the Dead crafts were featured in Parents Latina and Family Fun magazine!
A few months ago I received an email from a lifestyle director inviting me to collaborate with Parents Latina magazine and Family Fun magazine on a few projects inspired by the Day of the Dead celebration.
I remember reading through the email and thinking that it must be a small collaboration for their website, but it ended up being an actual feature in the printed edition of Parents Latina magazine and Family Fun magazine!
We worked together for a couple of weeks. Sending emails back and forth with ideas, inspirational boards, sketches, drafts and photos of the actual finished projects. Their team was amazing and really helpful!
I remember the day I had to send the finished products to their offices in New York for the photoshoot. I was exhausted that morning because I had to stay up late the night before, finishing all the details on the sugar-skull pillows and then as you can imagine, my motherhood responsibilities woke me up at 6am! I survived the morning in Jaxon’s class with tons of coffee.
That afternoon I put Jaxon in his crib hoping he would take a nap, but he didn’t love the idea. It’s funny, but I was so scared the mini paper nichos were going to get ruined inside the box, so I packed them inside some tupperware next to the memory card game and tons of tissue paper. I also watched a youtube video about how to pack artwork to make sure I was as protecting the tissue paper transfer art piece.
Here is a picture of my copy of Parents Latina and Family Fun magazine featuring Live Colorful / Elba Valverde Day of the Dead crafts
Work in progress! here is a sneak and peak of one of the Day of the Dead sugar skull pillows that Live Colorful / Elba Valverde designed for Parents Latina magazine. They turned out super adorable!
Sugar Skull Day of the Dead pillows: The picture above is one of the sugar-skull pillow pieces before I ironed it and assembled it.
This is a picture from Live Colorful’s workspace of the cute memory card game that Live Colorful / Elba Valverde created for the Parents Latina magazine article.
Memory card game: Above you can see the first illustrations that I created for the memory card game.
These mini paper nichos turned out adorable! I loved how much fun I had cutting small pieces of paper and putting all the pieces together. | Live Colorful / Elba Valverde
Mini Paper Nichos: Above you can see how the mini paper nichos I created and decorated before packing them inside the tupperware.
This tissue paper sugar skull transfer art was one of the most challenging ones because we had to try with a lot of different tissue paper brands until we found the perfect one!
Tissue Paper Sugar Skull Transfer Art. The tissue-paper transfer art piece took me a long time! I had to figure out a way to make the project easy to make for the kids, but when I got the perfect material and created the template everything was fun and simple!
I wish I had a picture of me walking from the parking lot to the USPS offices. I put Jaxon in a stroller and on top of the stroller, a humongous box. I maneuver like an expert with one hand, trying to protect Jaxon’s head from the box and holding the tissue paper transfer art piece in the other hand. I’m sure it was hilarious to watch from far away.
Two days ago, I finally met Grace Bastidas, the editor of Parents Latina and Ser Padres at the #WeAllGrowFamilia conference in Los Angeles. We talked about the collaboration and she gave me a copy of the Parents Latina issue with all the projects I created. It felt great to see the projects in print after putting so much work into them.
It makes my heart smile when I think about the Day of the Dead as the inspiration behind the projects I created. Seeing the pictures of the projects brings back memories of my childhood. I can see my mom, beside me, while I hold scissors, glue, felt and paper, and together creating memories while we talk about abuelito and tia rosa. Dia de los Muertos is special because of the meaning behind the tradition, but also the colors. It connects with me on a deep level, because just like live colorful, day of the dead is all about celebrating life and cherishing the moments we spend with the people we love, even if they are not with us anymore.