Today, Life Happened: Kusudama Flowers: By the Numbers

I was contacted about 6 months ago by a company in Florida named Greenery Productions. They were looking for 156 of my Kusudama Flowers made from maps, and would need them delivered in a few weeks. I figured out how many flowers I would need to make per day in order to be able to deliver them on time, and agreed to make the flowers for them.

Somehow I got a bit behind in my timing of folding and ended up having to assemble them throughout the Thanksgiving weekend, but I was able to finish them, and deliver on time.

The first order, with blue and green embellished centers.

I was contacted again at the end of March with a request for 175 flowers, this time with red centers. The company that wanted them would need to make a decision by the 5th if they wanted to go ahead with the order, and the order would need to be there for April 16th.

I looked at the date and calculated it out that I would need to make just 12 flowers per day in order to be able to mail them by the Wednesday before and be delivered on time. Totally doable, right? Right. So I said I would.

Somehow, the following week after that got EXTREMELY busy with appointments at the office (I'm also a Licensed Massage Therapist) and things at home and other orders that were somehow falling behind (really, where in the world is time going???)

All of a sudden, it was the 5th, Greenery Productions contacted me saying that yes, the company WOULD like to go ahead with the order.

I had yet to cut a single peice of map.

*GULP*

It was time to "hunker down" and get to business.

Somewhere around 4am yesterday morning, as I was gluing petals together, I was thinking about how much work I had done over the past week (yes, just 7 days!).

So here are the facts:

175 Flowers with 175 Stems and 175 Red Glass Beads.

Each flower has 5 petals = 875 single petals.

Each petal was cut from a recycled map, with an average of 3 of those sides being cut by me (this accounts for the ones cut along the edge that didnt need that side cut, and the ones in the middle that did) = 2625 cuts.

Each petal consists of 12 folds = 10,500 (!!!!) folds.

Each petal is glued into form, then held with 2 binder clips until dry = 3,500 squeezes of the clips (4 times each petal- twice to put them on, twice to take them off).

Each petal is glued into form, and then they are glued into groups of 2, then those groups of two are glued together into 4 = 1,225 squeezes of the glue bottle.

The final petal is glued on with hot glue at the same time as the stem. When all the stems and petals are together, the beads are then placed, also with hot glue = 350 squeezes of the glue gun trigger, and 5 long glue sticks.

They shipped in one very large box = 9 pounds 8 ounces total.

*PHEW*

I'm beat.

Honestly, I have never pulled an "all nighter" for work or school or anything other than when I was younger and sleeping over at a friends house. And although I didn't this time either, the 2 hours of sleep I snuck in from 5-7am yesterday really DIDN'T help much.

But they are done, they are shiped, and will be arriving well before the deadline.