Meet Mariana Chavez of Rattlehead Crafts in Hollywood

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mariana Chavez.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Mariana. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I was born in Mexico City in the mid-90’s and moved to Los Angeles when I was five years old with my mother and sister. We grew up watching movies like Child’s Play, the Ring, Star Wars and the Nightmare Before Christmas; the latter sparked a love for animation, stop-motion and Halloween for me.

I graduated from Hollywood High School in 2013, and Rattlehead Crafts was born the summer after my graduation. I’d suddenly found myself having more time than I knew what to do with, so I YouTubed sewing tutorials and taught myself how to sew! I’d been drawing all my life, but sewing- on a machine, at least- was a new medium for me. I got very into it very quickly and started making bags, custom jackets, and other hand-sewn goodies. I opened an Etsy shop, and named it Rattlehead Crafts.

A couple of years into running my shop, I decided to venture out and make some enamel pins. The first two I made were based on original characters, and the third was based on a commissioned painting I did for a friend- Pennywise on his knife sheath. I thought the shape of the sheath and the way Pennywise looked on it was so cool, and that was the birth of our most popular collection to date: The Slasher Collection. The Pennywise pins sold out almost immediately! It was absolutely insane. I went from getting a few orders a month to 50+ orders in one day. I thought, “Maybe there’s something to this whole pin thing”. That was in 2017.

In the three years since then, I’ve released 30+ pins, earrings, patches, bags, journals, you name it! Everything I make is based on my personal favorite things, so there’s a lot of horror-themed merch. However, I also pay tribute to some of my favorite cult classics, such as A Clockwork Orange, SLC Punk, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Pans Labyrinth. Ive also made some music-themed stuff, for example a Double-Decker Bus enamel pin with the phrase “To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die.”

For the past couple of years, I’ve been vending at amazing events such as Salem’s Market, Spooky Expo, Pin and Patch Con, and various Art Walks. I’ve continued to attend school through all of this, as well as working my day job. When I started the shop, it was only a hobby, a way to make a little extra cash while having fun on my sewing machine; but it has gotten so much bigger than I could’ve ever imagined. However cheesy or cliché, I’ll admit the best part of everything has been all the people I’ve met through it. Both creators and customers- I’ve made so many genuine friends through my shop. I wouldn’t trade the experience of running Rattlehead Crafts for anything in the world.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Most of the obstacles I’ve faced while running the shop have been because of the extent to which I try to multi-task. I’ll admit I am a workaholic, and I ALWAYS bite off more than I can chew. I wish there were more hours in the day so I could get more done. The hardest season for me is Fall, and that’s because as a horror obsessed shop, Halloween season gets incredibly busy. I usually get a ton of online orders during the Fall months; I think September through December account for 50% of our annual sales. Most of the really big events we do also fall under this time frame, so there’s the stress of planning for and doing those. All of this while working five days a week at my day job, and preparing for mid-terms at school. It is definitely a lot to handle, and I hate to admit it, but I think I thrive on the constant pressure- it keeps me motivated and keeps me busy, but there are definitely days where I just feel so incredibly overwhelmed and want to quit everything.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
We’re most known now for enamel pins, and as I previously mentioned, the Slasher Collection is our most popular. It consists of knife-shaped enamel pins with the faces of the most beloved Slasher-film stars on the blade. Another very popular collection we’ve done is the Collection for the Recently Deceased, which plays tribute to Beetlejuice, Miss Argentina, and those pesky Sandworms we all love to hate. Recently we started making a bunch of stickers, and people seem to love those very much too! It’s so cool seeing people tag us in their pictures and getting to see all the places our stickers and pins end up. The horror community is full of so many badass, creative and committed individuals and it constantly inspires me to keep creating.

Everything I make comes from a place of love and admiration. I make things for fans who are just as obsessed and inspired by the movies we’ve grown up with. I’m most proud of the fact that everything I make truly means something to me. It’s really easy to make things that are popular, that you know will sell. But I think it’s a lot harder to really put thought and love and work into something, because you know these characters are important to you and to other people, and they deserve to be the best they can be. I’m a perfectionist, and no design gets sent out until it is as close to perfect as I can make it.

I also love representing movies that sometimes seem to get ignored or forgotten. SLC Punk was one of my favorite movies growing up, and when I tried to find merch for it, it was impossible to find. So, I decided to make some, for the fans like me who wanted a little something to show some love with. The same with our Pale Man pin from Pans Labyrinth, or our “Love Yourself First” pin from the stop-motion movie Mary and Max. These designs sometimes are not as popular, but the look on people’s faces who love these films are priceless. They’re so happy to find a piece from a film that means a lot to them, and I personally know what a heartwarming feeling that is.

What were you like growing up?
Growing up, I was very shy, quiet and artsy. I got in trouble all my life for doodling on my classwork. I was part of the MySpace generation, and in middle school, I got into bands like My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco, Queen, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath. I also started getting into more spooky movies, growing especially fond of anything by Tim Burton. Once I got to High School, I had a pretty solid sense of who I was and what I liked. I was still very quiet, but I started dressing in all black, always a band tee, and my “battle vest”. My favorite bands during that time included Megadeth, Slayer, Kreator and Iron Maiden. I stared hanging out with the other metalheads in school, there were maybe 8 or 10 of us total- most of them were older than me. That’s one of my favorite periods in my life still- we just hung out, talked about music and went to shows together. Jimmy Kimmel gets filmed right behind our HS football field, and they hosted free shows every week or so. If there was a band that we liked playing that day, we’d run right over after school to make line, and we saw a lot of awesome bands for free that way. We got to see legends such as KISS, Motley Crue, Megadeth and Rammstein. It really felt like one of those older coming-of-age films like Dazed and Confused or Detroit Rock City.

During high school, I was also a part of the theater’s stage crew. We put on two big musicals a year or something like that, and I was way too shy to act, but I was definitely crafty enough to build props and sets. The first musical I worked on was Chicago, and it started a deep love I now have for musical films and theater. I made most of my friends outside my music friend group through my art and craftiness. I was too shy to talk to anyone in my classes, but sometimes they’d see me doodling and they’d talk to me or ask me to draw something for them, and I made a lot of friends that way. I feel like where I lack verbally, I make up for in visual communication. I’m still like that today, though my job in customer service has definitely pushed me to be a bit more social. All in all, I’ve always been creative and my need to make things seems to increase as I get older. I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for me, my art, and Rattlehead Crafts!

Pricing:

• Pins $10-$20
• Stickers $3
• Keychains $10

Contact Info:

• Website: RattleheadCrafts.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @RattleheadCrafts
• Twitter: @RattleheadCraft

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