Felt flowers and my attempt

Hello, there. It’s been 84 years.

I’m currently home. Mom asked me to come home because she has some “errands” for me to do. Mom has nobody to ask for help regarding computer stuff since Dad passed away five months ago. So, here I am, 14 hours away from Malang “only” to help her with her job. 

See? There is a reason why I have to have money. You think plane tickets are cheap?

I’ve been preparing to go back to crafting business since I had arrived in Malang around two months ago. I can’t believe I would diligently cutting and gluing felt fabric again just like five years ago. I’ve been away from crafting business for way too long I forgot how it feels to keep working with fabric and its equipment.

Honestly, the idea to go back to this business had been in my mind since March but then Dad rushed to the ER and then the ICU and then he passed away and all of my plans just simply shattered and it was really hard to get back to my own feet again after all of that. But deep inside I knew my life needed to go on so I started preparing—practicing again since May or June when I was still home.

Okay, felt flowers. I was going to talk about felt flowers.

I had this idea of creating graduation gift products because Malang is “Kota Pendidikan” (education city? Educational city? My English vocabularies are rusty because I don’t use it for only-God-knows-how-long). Sometimes I would come to graduation ceremony (wtf is “wisuda” in English??) just to see what kind of graduation gift that people sell around. 

So many of them sell flowers—flower bouquets. Some of them sell real flowers, some sell paper flowers (backsound: Evanescence – Imaginary), and some of them sell felt flowers.

D00od, there were felt flowers in bouquets.

Putting the detailed story aside, I knew I need to change my original plan into this one. I told one friend, another friend, and they told me they could help me selling the products. No, they do not jump right into the production process, but they would help me by promoting the products itself. It’s already enough because the process of promoting my products irritates me. 

As I’ve said before, I started practicing since May or June. I needed to practice how to make felt flowers because felt flowers for bouquet are completely different with the ones I made around seven years ago.

the 2010 ones

When I was practicing for the first time, I didn’t imagine that felt flower bouquets would be more-more-more complex than I thought. 

I got into trouble once I started gluing the flower patterns into the wire. It just… pissed me off. I would accidently gluing my fingers instead of the flowers patterns. There were so many flower patterns in various sizes so it took me some time to create a full flower.

The second problem was how to arrange the flowers into one beautiful bouquet.

Damn, that process drove me crazy. I felt like I have no sense of “beautifying” those flowers. I kept asking my housemates to check on the bouquets I made. I couldn’t help but keep checking to some flowers arrangements I found on Pinterest. I even have it printed and put them on my wall!

 

The problem didn’t stop there: the wrapping process!

Let the picture speaks: 

You know what, I have no money. I already used my savings to pay my rent and to buy equipments to help me making felt flowers; I don’t have more money to buy spunbond fabrics in various colors, the ones other craft artist used to wrap their felt flowers. I used anything I could find in my room: I used gift wrapping paper from my collection (that kind hurt my kokoro), I used spunbond fabrics I already own (just white, black and magenta—that’s kinda sad), I even used canvas fabric I originally intended to do some DIY projects.

But it won’t stop me. Once I got used to it, I realized it’s actually fun to create felt flower bouquets. And I hope I could really earn more money from it and hire real employees one day.

 

No. The Coffee Bean doesn't sell flowers.