Photo by Danny Fulgencio
Kristy Crawford likes the little touches. And 18 years ago, she made a business out of it.
Kristy Crawford and her mother, Sara, founded Two Funny Girls in 2001, an embroidery and personalization business, after Sara beat breast cancer. Sara bought herself an embroidery machine and started crafting. Kristy, who loves stationery, created designs and monograms in Photoshop to print onto cups, napkins, drink koozies and more.
The pair applied for a business permit, and Kristy reached out to friends to offer design services. They rented a tent at an art fair in the Park Cities for $200 and made $1,000 from sales in one day.
Soon, customers were emailing and calling Kristy to ask if she could create different products for them.
Eighteen years later, Two Funny Girls has expanded to Etsy for international shipping and is filling hundreds of domestic orders per month. But now it’s just Kristy. Sara’s cancer came back, and she died in October 2018.
It’s been hard running the business without her mom, but Kristy says she wants to keep it going and to focus more on embroidery in honor of her late business partner.
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- Photo by Danny Fulgencio
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- Photo by Danny Fulgencio
“We did a lot of embroidery and then we scaled back on it,” Kristy says. “Now that we have two people doing embroidery, I would like to rev that back up. I just want to honor my mom through it. It was such a love of her life, and I just want to continue to honor her passion through it.”
Personalized items make up the majority of orders. Two Funny Girls sells any type of merchandise a customer could think of, from crawfish boil party favors to wedding gifts to clothing labels and matches. Backpacks, blankets and pillowcases are also available for order.
Photo by Danny Fulgencio
Personalized cups, though, are the most popular item by a mile, Kristy says. “Everyone needs a cup with something written on it.”
Kristy’s personalized Luke’s Diner cups, made for the revival of “Gilmore Girls” in 2016, were even featured on Buzzfeed as a gift to get the coffee lover in your life.
Everything she knows about design, Kristy learned by watching YouTube videos. Whenever she thinks of a new design concept or a customer requests one, she finds a YouTube video about it. That’s how she learned how to format text into a circle.
Personalizing items for customers is Kristy’s passion. She’ll sit on the couch at night and search the internet for new design concepts and ideas. It’s hard for her to ever stop thinking about the business.
“I just love making people’s events special,” she says. “I love styling and entertaining and just little touches. And I’m helping people have those little touches in their events.”
