Country Mouse Monday: this little piggy went to market

In a couple of weeks, my Blissbug wares – beeswax candles and salves and lipbalms – will be for sale for the first time in a local store. This is huge. I am completely a-buzz.

I’m not even selling my stuff yet -- um, I am still producing it and figuring out the pricing and the display, and and -- and already I’m experiencing such interesting tension between what my vision is and what other people think it should be.

I didn’t expect to feel so challenged, so questioned, so annoyed, but then it dawned on me:

All that squeezing, pushing pressure is forcing me to make diamonds.

The tension is a force for good, compelling me to draw and write and explain what only I can see. To bring my own vision to light. My way.

But before I arrived at that conclusion, when I was explaining for the third time to my good-natured husband why I wanted the display to be just-so – and he’s building it for me, for which I am so grateful – I said something I am fairly certain I have never said in my whole entire life:

"Wait: this needs to be true to MY creative vision."

Yeah, I said that.

And yeah, I have never, ever said that before.

What’s great about the tension, the pressure, inherent in bringing these products to market is that I suddenly realize that hey, I do have a vision for this, one that’s entirely mine, and that there’s a way I want this to be, a way that these products I am making are a deep and personal expression. An expression of me.

How awesome is it that I, a grown-ass woman of 51, suddenly have a creative vision of my own? SO awesome.

That’s not to say I haven’t been creative and productive all these years til now. But this? This is completely new for me.

So while I was sitting there, waiting for burritos, I used the push of that pressure to scribble this in my notebook.

It matters to me that Blissbug is:

- Small-batch – made by me and by our bees. I don’t care about meeting huge demand. I’m not, nor do I aspire to be, Burt’s Bees.

 - Low impact – the wax is organic and local, we use a solar oven to process/filter wax and melt ingredients. The materials used are wood, metal, glass, no plastic, with an emphasis on reusable containers. We don’t use any chemicals in our hives. All ingredients are organic and as local as possible.

-  Pretty – I love the branding and need everything, from the labels to the packaging to the display – to stay cute.

- Special – quantities are necessarily limited by the number of hives we have and what they can produce. This keeps production small & special.

- Educating about bees – by incorporating images and artifacts from the hive, like pieces of honeycomb, into the display.

- Giving back – Blissbug products connect consumers to local beekeeping and to organizations working to protect honeybees via a contribution made from each purchase.

- Mine: it’s my vision, made with my hands, it’s my expression and my gift to others.

I am having a blast and learning so much, even from the tension, even from the pressure. Making candles and making diamonds!

XX

To find out about this upcoming top-secret retail location and to follow our progress as we prepare for and then dive into this new venture, Like Blissbug Farm on Facebook and sign up for our email list.