During 2020, we started to offer hand-made cards. These cards are made in house, with flowers pressed right here in the shop! I had seen many videos on TikTok of ways to press flowers, or ways to preserve flowers. I had tried before, but never had much success. This time when I tried to press flowers, they turned out very well! So well, that I started to keep the pressed flowers. My issue became that I had so many pressed flowers and I didn't know what to do with them after pressing them! Cue the hand-made cards.
I have two drawers in my store that are full of pressed flowers - spray roses, mini carnations, babies breath, leather leaf, solidago, stocks, and many more. I have also tried to press some flowers that do not work out super well, as they get very see-through and fragile when they are pressed and dried out.
These two cards were made in the early days of our hand-made cards. I had been using a stamp at the time, for the text on the cards. I was also using washi tape that I had collected at home to help add a bit more to the cards than just the flowers. I also bought some brown card stock, as I personally like the look of a brown card better than a pure white one. I started with a box of 50 cards, which was the smallest quantity I could find at the time. I now order boxes of 100 cards at a time.
I started to get people asking for more occasions than I could find stamps for! Can you believe that I could not find a "Happy Anniversary" stamp? There was also a lack of "I Love You" stamps in the marketplace. I tried local craft stores, chain craft stores, craft websites, and even Amazon! Now, calligraphy is not my strong suit - I went old school and printed out some lettering from my computer, copied it onto the cards with carbon paper, and then went over the messages in permanent marker. This was A LOT of work!
I had a friend of mine do something a little different; she wrote on the card in pencil to get the message to look how she wanted it to, then erased it to be barely visible, then went over it in permanent marker! This way was a lot quicker, and looked just as nice (if you ask me, better!) than the stamps. After she helped me with these cards, they started to sell a lot quicker and more people were looking at them. They are now available both in store and online!