A few months ago, I received an order for a set of my paper rose magnets, sans magnets!
Boston area photographer, Dasha Kazakova, asked me to create some earth-tone roses to coordinate with a few brooches she had... I found some chocolate, ivory, and basil papers that I thought would be perfect.
Well, little did I know that she would turn my paper rose "magnets" into this gorgeous brooch bouquet!
Isn't it great what happens when art meets art? (And then gets photographed so elegantly to boot!) I'm honored to have my work contribute to such a lovely statement!
Check out Dasha's blog for more details - I believe that bouquet is still available, and she'll likely be ordering more of my mini-flowers for another one!
I was logging into my Etsy shop like I regularly do when I got a message from a customer. She basically said "I found your magnets in Easy Living magazine and I was wondering if you ship to the UK?"
My brain kind of twitched and was all, "Hey, Sandy? Did she just say that our magnets were in a magazine?" So I immediately busted out my Sherlock Holmes Harriet The Spy skills and set ta googlin'...
After a day of having zero luck figuring out how to get my hands on a copy, I decided to appeal to humanity... I did a Twitter search for "easy living" and found some tweets about a @janehamerton being featured in the same issue.
I'm usually a sniveling coward about asking for things, but I figured it was for my business and I'd have to bite the bullet and write an email. (I know, I know... Such angst over an email? If you've ever met me you'd know I care a lot about such things.)
Anyway, I emailed the lovely and lovely and talented Jane Hamerton and she went completely out of her way to help me get my own copy of February's Easy Living. She even scanned the images posted above for me to use until the actual mag gets here!
I love people and how wonderfully generous they can be... Stay tuned for next Wednesday's post devoted to Jane and her charming personalized towels!
I was originally intending to post about Robot In Bloom's news for the new year, when I read this excellent post by one of my design and business heroes, Princess Lasertron (aka - Megan Hunt).
I'll admit, I wasn't brave enough to write about this failure when it happened, but Megan's blog post made me realize that I should share my negatives, especially if they turn into positives!
For those who don't wish to read the entire post (thought you really should), here are a few excerpts to give you the gist of her "failure" story...
I can’t stand mistakes, I can’t tolerate them, but I believe that anyone who claims they don’t make mistakes is not cut out to own a business. The challenge is to be quick to recognize your mistakes, acknowledge them, and find creative ways to correct them.
...
Over 70 hours of painstaking custom work–for brides, no less–lost in the mail and never delivered ... The right thing to do is refund their money for the flowers they never got to use and enjoy, and it hurts me a lot. It’s the first time I’ve ever had this happen, and what makes it most frustrating is that it was completely out of my hands.
...
There is a lesson here and I hate that I had to learn it the hard way. I hate it. I am still sick about it. But the best thing to do is to talk about it transparently and show how mistakes and accidents can happen in any business, and show compassion for the customers who are hurt by the errors.
After reading that Megan - craft business goddess - has problems occasionally, AND was brave enough to write about them, I just had to comment. Usually I just admire her work from afar, but this time I left this comment and I wanted to also share it with my readers:
A similar thing happened to me recently and it truly broke my heart. I create paper flower bouquets for “offbeat” brides and I have the same issues as you – once the package leaves my hands, it’s up to the USPS, etc. to make sure it gets there safely. For one of my brides, her shipment of 80 Oriental poppies showed up with about 40 of them squished beyond repair.
I panicked when I heard the news, but I was really proud of my initial reaction… Immediately, I knew I had to remake and ship the flowers because that’s what’s important to me. Yes, there’s too much expectation of “perfection” on wedding days, but it’s my personal goal to make sure each of my customers gets exactly what they were expecting whether it was my error or not.
It was really cool to find out that, in a crisis, I practice what I preach and that my heart is in my business for the right reasons!
So, yeah... Sometimes you surprise yourself in a crisis, but I think it's an even better feeling when you're NOT surprised at your reaction!
Have you ever had a business take really good care of you? Have you ever had really crummy service? Tell me about it below! I'd like to learn from others' mistakes and make sure it never happens to my brides!
In all honesty, I'm brimming with desire to post, but I'm not sure where to begin... The rally was an incredibly positive and unique experience that I consider myself lucky to have been a part of. My husband and I went into it (like many people, possibly including even Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert themselves) not sure what to expect.
We don't have cable, but we used to. And when we did, we were huge fans of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report... I don't even remember how I first heard about the rally, but I do know that I immediately HAD to attend. We bought plane tickets before even seeing Jon's "call to reasonableness" video online.
A wee bit early for full leaf-change.
This was a rather unreasonable act for me and Josh because we almost never splurge on anything or make a decision that quickly. But we did it. I don't know why we were so eager. Was it just an exercise in personal spontaneity (Yep. I know.), or was it a reflection of how completely fed up we are with the loud, obnoxious attention that loud, obnoxious extremists are granted by the media at large?
In the weeks leading up to the rally, it seems like America was wondering the same thing: is the rally just a comedy show for anti-establishment slackers who want to thumb their noses at the immensity of the problems in our country? Or is it a serious political movement and a loud message to the media and government that we're not gonna take it anymore? And when I asked myself what I was hoping to get out of it, I came to realize that what I wanted changed from moment to moment. Finally, I just resigned myself to, "Hey, at least I'll get to breathe the same air as Jon and Stephen, and that's pretty cool."
We got on the plane on Friday and found six other passengers in our immediate vicinity that were headed toward the rally, too! My hopes definitely rose. I mean, honestly, I haven't met many people in Houston whose favorite activity is exploring their own beliefs and encouraging others to do the same. So, yeah, I was thrilled!
We got a better idea of how many ralliers were there while riding the DC Metro, but on Saturday morning a quick peek at the morning news showed the National Mall filling up four hours before the start time. It looked like we weren't the only people who believed in... well, something...
We believe in a lot of different stuff!
We followed the masses to the Mall and found the most distinctive crowd ever. It's incredibly rare to have hundreds of thousands of people in the same area and have them all act right, right? Well, not these folks. I've never seen so many people NOT pushing, NOT shoving, NOT jockeying for position... Most people actually said, "Excuse me" if they had to scoot in front of you to get to where they were going! And we were packed in like sardines. It was like rock concert/subway rush hour proximities. No one smelled bad. I only saw two people smoking (and they were on the outskirts of the main crowd). People even allowed shorter people they didn't know stand in front of them if they couldn't see!
It was astounding!
At one point, there was a large sign that was blocking the view of me and many people around me. The guy behind me shouted, "Hey! Guy with the big sign about bears! Can you lower your sign please?" And he did, and we all shouted "Thank you!" No animosity necessary....
Can it be? Are these my fellow non-extreme 80% of the nation? Are they really out there?
In a way, the rally was a failure in terms of "rally excitement" because it was full of people who don't really like to clap along to songs, or shout things back at performers who ask you to shout things during their songs. But, like I said, that's MY kind of people and they're awesome!
There were a handful of people that didn't keep with the spirit of the rally. Some chose to dress as teabags or in general ridiculousness, while others made signs that specifically attacked certain political figures. I wondered if these few individuals were unable or unwilling to understand the point. Maybe it was just a Halloween thing.
Then again, it was the leftist organization MoveOn.org who were the douchebags who brought those annoying beach balls (printed with the website name) and unreasonably bounced those around the crowd. Seriously guys, no one likes those.
Another thing I noticed about the crowd was the diversity... Not just racial and ethnic diversity, but also age. My 20-year old cousin drove down from Massachusetts for the rally (sorry I didn't meet up with you, Becky!), and apparently the very elderly Mexican-American man I sat next to on the subway flew in from Seattle. It was great to see that sanity is not the property of one segment of the population.
The signs were the real stars in a way. They covered a large breadth of humor from the silly:
to the satirical:
to the ones so simply true, they make you laugh:
All in all, the rally was a huge success and an essential show of positivity for America, all accomplished while walking the fine line of satire and silliness achieved every weeknight by the Daily Show and the Colbert Report.
Jon Stewart did an amazing job of summing up the goals of the rally himself, so please watch this unedited video of his speech.
It's really wonderful and it echoes my final thoughts of the day.
I create posh paper floral designs for all occasions. I love crafts, dance, music, art, literature, movies... all sorts of snooty things. I also love robots, Star Trek: TNG, my Wii, and other decidely un-snooty things, so it evens out.
Please click on the links above to learn more about my flower skills!
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