09.02.09
Posted in Katelyn Joy, Katelyn Joy Derstine, Katelyn Joy Scholarship Fund, crystal tees, custom apparel, custom logo shirts, custom salon tees, custom spa shirts, fundraiser apparel, fundraising shirts, gifts for girls, gifts for moms, goodtobeyou, hotfix transfers, inspirational tees at 12:09 pm by Sparkle Plenty
“DESIGN DIVAS” Article in STITCHES Magazine – September 2009
Lee Romano Sequiera’s decorative approach is crystal clear – literally. “I’ve always liked original things,” says Sequiera, owner of Philadelphia-based Sparkle Plenty Designs, which has been a pioneer in the crystal T-shirt fashion movement. “Once you make something original, you want to share it with other people.”
Sequeira’s career didn’t begin in fashion, but her previous work allowed her to tap into her creativity. “My background is in publicity, promotions and book publishing,” she says.
After attending a beauty convention in New York City – and being inspired by a convention speech by Kyan Douglas, star of the fashion-oriented TV show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy – Sequiera decided to start GoodtoBeYou.com in 2004. Later that year, she won an award for “Most Beautiful Website” from celebrity makeup artist Elke Von Freudenberg.
“I fell in love with so many of the spa, bath and beauty products on display and decided to start my own site with fun, practical and unique products and informative articles for women,” Sequiera says. “After a year, I added handbags, accessories and created a dare-to-wear line of crystal and rhinestone shirts with cheeky sayings on them – even a line of shirts for people who had plastic surgery and wanted to have fun with the healing process.” (Some of those sayings include “I Love The New Me,” and “Under Construction.”)
Two years later, Sequiera and her husband, Andrew, moved from New Jersey to Philadelphia when they acquired Sparkle Plenty from its owners, who had founded the store six years earlier. Sparkle Plenty provides custom crystal apparel for a variety of markets, from restaurants and wineries to spas and salons. Sequiera’s T-shirts are embellished with Swarovski crystals. “We were one of the first companies to make crystal shirts,” she says. “They’re actually pro-set and heat-transferred on.” Her more creative designs include tees that feature a yin and yang, a lotus flower and a peace sign.
In addition to its numerous T-shirt designs, Sparkle Plenty offers Swarovski crystals for accessories such as hats, headbands, jewelry – and even body tattoos. “They’re crystals with a medical adhesive on the back,” Sequiera says. “You just press it on the skin wherever you want, you peel back the clear tape, and you have a crystal design that will stay on your skin for anywhere from five days to two weeks. They’re really popular for summer.” In the past four years, Sequiera has already had her share of top clients for her crystal T-shirts, including NASA, the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders and Mexico’s Next Top Model. For each of these companies, Sequiera turned their respective logos into a crystal embellishment across the middle of the tee.
But with all the prestige that comes with her nationally-known customers, Sequiera is the most passionate about her lower- profile work for fundraising events. “My husband and I are big believers in giving back,” she says. One of the collections closest to Sequiera’s heart is in memory of Katelyn Joy Derstine, a 20-year-old girl who was recently killed in a car accident. “She was a budding artist, involved in the community, an all-around great kid,” she says.
So, Sequiera and Derstine’s mother collaborated on the Fly High Tee collection. Sequiera took a piece of original artwork by Derstine and converted it into Swarovski crystal art. The artwork includes a butterfly with the words “Fly High” on each side of the design. The profits from each shirt go to the Katelyn Joy Derstine Scholarship Fund. “When and if we do T-shirts like that, I’d rather give some back to charity,” Sequiera says. The Sequieras also donate a portion of each custom order of 25 pieces or more to one of several charities, including Make-A-Wish Foundation and Defenders of Wildlife.
Sequiera says she loves what she does – not just because of her charity work or her high-profile clients, but because she’s a crystal tee client herself. “I’m a sparkly girl,” she says.
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02.21.09
Posted in Crystallized, Swarovksi Crystal Shirts, crystal tees, inspirational tees at 4:19 pm by Sparkle Plenty
i manifest, i create, i inspire, i pray, i believe… inspirational messages which would seem to make our lives a bit more fulfilling if we practiced just one of these mindsets on a daily basis. We, at Sparkle Plenty Designs, created our inspirational line of shirts called “i tees” with these exact messages, and brought them to life with genuine sparkling Swarovski crystal.
Since this post is about inspirational and a positive mindset, we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to post a fantastic article by the very inspirational Veronica Lim. The article below is called “Are You Letting Your Abundance In?” Please read on and learn to manifest, create and believe in creating abundance in your life.
Stay sparkly,
xo
~ the staff at Sparkle Plenty Designs.
~~~
Abundance can show up in all kinds of forms – health, well-being, friendships, laughter, fun, sadness, joy, and a whole manner of ways. And, in our world as we know it, it also often shows up as money.
But for many people, money has negative connotations. Many of us have seen the greed that can come with money, and the callousness or ruthlessness that can be the energy behind the making of that money. There’s also the paradigm, where if you are spiritual, you renounce all your wealth and embrace the spirit of poverty.
Those are old paradigms. We are shaking those old paradigms off right now, and going through a period where we are learning – having to learn – how to integrate the two into the new paradigm, so that the “material 3D” is intertwined with the spiritual.
(Just as a note, the financial shake-up we’re seeing in our world right now is part of that shaking off of old paradigms and creating a playing field which calls us to find and use our feminine creative principle – but that’s a whole new article).
Notice that I did not say, “materialistic”, but “material 3D” because there is a difference. “Materialistic” refers to the attachment to things and money, while “material 3D” refers to our physical world. There is no doubt that we live in a physcial world and what we are now doing is integrating our spiritual aspect with our physical.
The paradox is that when our spirit is full – when we are happy and fulfilled, being the fullest expression of who we are – the need and want for money becomes less and less. We become less attached to things, perhaps even detached. We do still want to enjoy a good lifestyle (whatever that means to each of us) but there is no attachment to it, simply gratitude. We don’t buy things in the way that we may have felt compelled to in the past, and owning things no longer has the same attraction. Our buying decisions become more conscious. Also, providing we have also let go of any limiting beliefs we have around money, the more fully we express ourselves, the more we experience joy in our lives, and the more we are in that balanced place of desire and detachment for more, the more money comes into our experience as the balancing side of the energy equation.
And because we are also fully connected with our Divine Self and so also the rest of the universe, the desire to help others with that money is also present.
In business terms, our full and open expression of who we truly are leads to our work becoming play and marketing becoming an expression of our passion and what we love to do, as we express our desire to share our passion with others.
This is the new paradigm – for us to BE who we truly are, embracing who we truly are and fully expressing who we truly are through our passion and joy, and to allow in the abundance of everything good into our lives including the potential of large flows of money, which we can then choose to channel toward different purposes to help others if we want.
Many people know that money is energy but still have beliefs and hang-ups about it. I know that I did. On the one hand, I wanted more but then on the other hand, I also found myself being ashamed to openly declare that – because people might think bad things of me if they knew. I often thought that I had handled my money beliefs, but then one day, I realized that I still felt the pain of other people’s poverty (this is one that I remember very well from when I was about three years old). Compassion allows you to feel for others without going into the emotion (vibration) of it and allows you to be in a place of abundance from which you are better placed to help – either physically or energetically, while empathy takes you fully into the vibration of that very thing you don’t want.
Let’s relate money to electricity, another form of energy, for a moment. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that we don’t tend to have judgment and anxiety around electricity. We don’t think of electricity as “bad” even though we know that electricity can be used to torture and/or kill fellow human beings, a practice that still goes on in various parts of our world today. Instead, we tend to focus on the “good” uses of electricity – lighting our homes, operating our televisions, helping us cook and so on. Electricity, most of us can readily agree, is neutral in and of itself, but it is its application and the energy behind that that makes it “good” or “bad”; nothing else.
It’s the same with money. It’s the energy behind our actions in relation to money – be it the acquiring of it or the using of it – that makes the difference. Yet we often tend to keep it separate, making judgments or holding it away from us.
So the question then is, will you stay with the old paradigm where spirituality and money are seen as opposite ends of the spectrum – you have either one or the other? Or will you move into the new paradigm and integrate the two into your everyday, where the expression of your spirit flows and expands, and includes the flow and expansion of money in your life – you have both, because both are the fullest possible expression of spirit?
We are in transitional times. We are learning new ways of being and new ways of blending the material 3D with our spiritual. We will find ourselves potentially flipping between the two – thinking straight line and either-or one moment, and then all-encompassing and all-inclusive the next. Tune into the truth of who you are and ask yourself, “Which feels better?”
© 2009 Veronica Lim
Professional coach Veronica Lim publishes the “True Power Newsletter” every other Friday, sending it to 2,200+ subscribers. If you are ready to make a living doing what you love, to grow yourself and your business and live the life you dream, get your FREE newsletter now at www.veronicalim.com.
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01.30.09
Posted in Crystallized, Fly High Butterfly Tee, Katelyn Joy, Katelyn Joy Derstine, Katelyn Joy Scholarship Fund, crystal tees, custom apparel, fundraiser apparel, fundraising shirts, inspirational tees, swarovski crystal shoes at 5:24 pm by Sparkle Plenty
At Sparkle Plenty Designs, bling is our business, and while we enjoy the enthusiastic responses from customers the first time they see their design sparkle, it’s even more gratifying when a special design comes along that can have an impact on people’s lives.
That’s the case with Fly High Butterfly, a wonderfully inspired original design by Katelyn Joy Derstine.
Katelyn created the design as an expression of her deep faith and love of butterflies. Bordering the design, she wrote, “Once while I was struggling to climb, I asked God to give me a sign. A sign that would tell me You were thinking about me and still loving me…to give me the strength to keep climbing. He did…He gave me a Butterfly.”
Katelyn’s life was tragically cut short in June 2006 when she was killed in a car accident. A junior studying Environmental Horticulture at the University of Florida, Katelyn possessed many talents and touched many lives, but it was her love of butterflies that inspired her mother to create The Katelyn Joy Derstine Scholarship Fund, Inc., “Fly High Award”.
The Fly High Award is a financial scholarship awarded annually to qualifying female high school seniors who demonstrate character traits exemplified by Katelyn through their academic excellence and solid promise of continuing, life-long dedication to selflessness.
We, at Sparkle Plenty, are proud to be a part of this very special scholarship fund. In honor of Katelyn, we’ve designed a Swarovski crystal Fly High Butterfly shirt, available to all for purchase. The design is a replica of Katelyn’s original art, created entirely out of Swarovski crystals.
You can purchase the shirt HERE. If you are a retailer and would like to get involved in selling the shirts to raise funds, please contact us at 800-952-0446. Proceeds from the sale of the shirts will go to the fund, helping to further the education of promising students – something that would have meant the world to Katelyn.
To learn more about Katelyn and The Fly High Scholarship Fund, please visit
Fly High KJD.
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