Must be Christmas

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A Very busy day of packing -- it must be almost Christmas!

The orders flowed in this weekend and Monday morning: Christmas shoppers. It's a big job packing my creations, because there is a lot of glass, and there are sometimes things like large beach stones that have to go in the same box. Although after ten years of packing I know a trick or two, it is very time consuming.

The first impression my customer gets (or the person to whom they are having me ship the gift) is from the look of my boxes. So I make a real effort to have sharp, clean looking boxes with neat labels etc.

The second impression is probably not that great as they remove the shipping paper, since I use recycled orange juice boxes, and then inside are recycled newspapers for padding. The newspapers are clean though, and I make sure to get the sort that do not have ink rubbing off.

Then they find all the actual items neatly wrapped in sill foam. The sill foam I buy new, and it is expensive. But it does an excellent job-- nothing has broken in over seven years (knock on wood).

The last impression hopefully knocks their socks off, as they remove the sill foam and see the actual item.

In the last twenty four hours I have received three emails similar to this one that I quote here:

"Tim!

You are such a lovely man! I got the suncatcher. It's a thousand times more beautiful than I expected. It's really nice to have the print up of where everything comes from and your inspiration for it too. It's an extraordinarily meaningful piece of art and I can't wait to give it to my mom and stepfather (especially because I hold the sea and everything that comes from it so close to my heart, since I grew up near the beach). And thank you so much for the copper earrings!!! I can't wait to buy from you again."

It has been so unusually freezing cold here, but emails like that warm me all day long. I love it!