Inspiration board from the Ann Taylor Blog
Twigs & Honey was recently commissioned to design and create paper flowers for the window displays of Ann Taylor retail stores. Pretty amazing, yes? It was a massive undertaking for us but very gratifying! I designed multiple paper flowers, some adapted from my handmade silk flowers and others that were brand new and Ann Taylor chose 9 total designs/sizes for their lovely windows. They will be featured during the month of April and will be in 266 stores nationwide. There are a few NYC locations and other flagship stores that will be receiving an extra special amount of flowers for a truly impressive display. We started discussions in late January and when we got the greenlight, we had about 3 weeks to finish the project. We had to purchase about 6000+ parent sized sheets of paper. They were all cut based on my patterns and then we had to hire and train about 27 contract workers around the area to help with the hand pressing and assembly (including my mom and mother-in-law!). After we got all the finished flowers back, we had just a couple days to package everything accordingly and then Matt and I drove them all down to California for distribution (okay, Matt did all the driving while I was passed out most of the way). Overall, it was the most grueling and stressful project ever, mainly due to the short turnaround time, but it was pretty awesome. Every single day was extraordinarily long and exhausting and it felt like there was some sort of crisis everyday, but in the end, we were so happy with completing the massive project and so grateful. Thank you so much, Ann Taylor, for this amazing opportunity! Also, thank you so much to all the contract workers for working tirelessly to finish the flowers. Each contractor had to make from 475-600+ flowers in a little over a week. That is VERY impressive!!!
Here are some photos of the flowers. Matt and I will be taking more photos of the actual displays later in the month. :)
9 different styles - 3D and 2D styles
Earlier versions
Every single petal was hand pressed or curled and hand assembled.
Some were larger...
Others were small and cute.
All in a midnight blue - which was a very tricky paper color and weight to source!
Boxes of flowers
Thousands of flowers...
After we bundled all the 12,000+ flowers into 800+ bundles, we boxed accordingly into massive boxes and packed the truck bound for California. I was so tuckered out. We had many 16+ hour days and I ended up snoozing most of the drive down, but managed to snap a few photos of the scenery:
Whew!
So definitely cruise by an Ann Taylor store near you to view our paper flowers all month long.
Thank you, Ann Taylor!!!
Thank you, hubby, for all your help and for tolerating my panic attacks and general moodiness!
Thank you, to my family and their friends for pitching in!
Thank you, to all the local contract workers for helping big time!