Eucalyptus, Thanks.

Final three “Thank you” spring botanical designs.

One week ago a good friend of mine was married at a beautiful ceremony at Vancouver’s Van Dusen Gardens. Spring plants blooming in all their glory and all the guests were given full day passes to enjoy the gardens, overall a lovely way to spend Victoria Day.

Rewind three months earlier, my friend asked me to make her wedding thank yous. I was honoured, and it spurred a flurry of creativity that ultimately became a bestseller for me. After some discussion, several mock-ups and a  browse of her Pinterest boards I was pretty sure I had the design down.

Eucalyptus “Thank You” mock-ups and colour testers

Eucalyptus, geometric designs and spring flowers led my designs and eventually brought the three different images that will be going out to guests very soon. This took me back to watercolours which I have not used often over the past ten years as I’m usually working with acrylics. There were quite a few late nights in March and April. Once I got the bug for these I kept going with the flow and more kept coming, not to mention I also signed up for the Etsy Artisans craft fair hosted by my local chapter. It may not seem like too much to accomplish in a month, but I already have a full time job so it required some careful juggling and sourcing of a good printer.

Then suddenly I was getting orders for these cards, and realized some areas of my distribution plan were a bit lacking. I didn’t really have packaging organized, or proper shipping costs, which because problematic when I got an order to ship more than 10,000 km away. I have most of the kinks worked out now, it helped that I discovered I could use my husband’s baking scale to weigh the packages. Needless to say, they have now traveled far across the globe as well as locally and are available through my Etsy page.

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Shop Geometric Eucalyptus “Thank you” Cards

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Spring weather

I’m on the ferry now, coming back from a long weekend with the family. Seems as good a time as any to write. We’ll see if anyone actually reads it. Anyway, the ride is beautiful today I’m actually too hot and worried I might have a sunburn on the tops of my feet (there’s something that’s been off the radar for months).

 It’s always wonderful at the farm, my sisters ‘ kids are such fun and I love the forest and quiet for a weekend. So it’s always a little sad when I have to got back to busy city life. Even the ferry seems a nice reprieve when the weather is nice enough to be outside. This weekend it dawned on me that I really should start planning our wedding, my family like to know what’s going on and my vagueness seemed to bug them. I’m a generalist so I have an overarching n idea but no details ( who can blame me though the wedding isn’t for more than another year). Society says I should already have it halfway planned, it just seems so far away right now I don’t have that sense of urgency yet that gets things moving. It will come, and then my efficiency will show. Not til next year though. I’m really not willing to spend crazy amount of money or stress on a wedding when so many other things that come after that day will be just as exciting as getting married. Travel, new house, babies, career changes. This is one piece of the puzzle, a big one, but not one we want to be paying for for years.

So back to the farm. My sister and her husband live in a beautiful piece of land in the Comox valley, they are a couple years away from opening their Blueberry farm. For now you can get just eggs and veg from them until the blueberries are bigger and have more fruit. I think they have a really wonderful future there, with three kids who will grow up with a love of the land and an appreciation of the energy that goes into making it. I can only hope to have the ability to empart that with my own children one day. Hopefully they will live going to the farm as much as I did as a kid. The mud pies and forts and cousins running around. I’m a bit slow on the uptake of the kids aspect but that’s ok.