You Are The BOMB DIGGITY (Thank You)

So, even though this blog has been resembling the scene of a tumbleweed blowing through a ghost town, I have been plenty busy. This year has started out with a bang. First of all, I now have Fridays off again, WOOT! At the end of the year my schedule had changed so that I was working a half day on Friday, which was fine by me, but now I have the whole day off. If you’ve been following this blog for any time you might have heard me complain about having to work on Fridays oh, about a bobajillion of times. Vacation days? I essentially went from having 15 a year to having an additional 52 on top of that. High Five, everyone!

That being said, I have been uber productive and am so thrilled with a HUGE project that I kicked off right at the beginning of the year and have essentially completed already. Late last year when I was tweeking some of my product packaging, I wanted to revise my thank you notes that I put into every order. I came up with a little design to expedite outgoing orders. I designed a stamp I would put on paper and then add a simple handwritten “Thank you, Robyn” instead of the whole long handwritten thank you notes I have been doing. The personal touch is so important for my shop, but writing out whole notes has really become a time consuming hurdle for me. The revised design would still be very handmade and personal, but would speed up the process. I blogged about the process in this post from November, where I carved a stamp, and then took the stamp a step further by heat embossing the image.

I shared that top picture on instagram and Jessee from Art School Drop Out replied saying it would make an awesome framed print which made me want to send one to her, which then made me want to send one to all the awesome people that inspire me on instagram. My original goal was to make 20 or so, but then I kept thinking of more and more people. So far I’ve sent out 50 and and still keep thinking of more and more.

1. I LOVE LOVE LOVE snail mail. I always think I need to send out more real mail and then I rarely do. I’m obsessed with all things mail (designing stationery, making mailart, having my own p.o. box, just to name a few) and yet I don’t actually send out as much as I daydream about. 2. Instagram is the bomb! Really.I have been on instagram since 2010, and have been posting pictures for two years strong. I love that I can share images of what I’m working on or what’s going on in my life and others do the same. There’s a very casual exchange and connection of people that I think even flickr didn’t get. (I had a few people toell me that they were very intimidated by flickr and that they could only post pictures that looked of a certain caliber.) I love the inspiration, the interactions and the support from the community. I wanted to send something out to everyone there that means something to me and let them know just how special they are. 3. It just kind of goes along with my love of random acts of kindness and putting positive things out there in the world. I know how much I love receiving real mail and so I like to imagine every single card I sent out and how it will brighten their day when it arrives. Even though I was the one who sent out the cards, not getting things in my own mailbox, I had an added benefit and that was seeing all the shared images of my card in my instagram feed! I made a mosaic of some of them above. How fun!

So, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You! To all the people that have been so supportive and provided me encouragement and inspiration. You Are The BOMB DIGGITY!