Tag: 3d print

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The Great Organization of 2019

As promised, more so to myself than any particular person, here is an update on our growing situation in the garage and house for this 3rd week of 2019.

We have officially moved 95% of our succulents inside the house due to cold weather conditions. About 75% of these reside in the garage and the rest on our windowsills scattered throughout the house. I can’t wait for spring to get all the plants back outside and growing under less stressful conditions. I find I am spending more time cleaning up after dropped leaves than I ever have before. Has anyone else noticed that their succulents stretch and drop a bunch more leaves when living inside the house? 

Slowly but surely, I am organizing all the propagated succulents in trays in the garage, see the pictures below. This attempt to keep all varieties near each other will make it a bit easier to organize later on when the plants are larger. Beyond that, we are planting out new leaves to grow more baby plants, and potting up teenaged succulents into 2″ pots (these will be our succulents to use in the spring & summer). Although we probably have close to 1000 succulents, the number of succulents we have still will not last us very long with our spring/summer markets coming up. We are preparing for this by acquiring more succulents and ramping up the amount of light & fertilizer we are giving.  

The succulents that are outside are VERY hardy mother plants; some crassulas types, leather petals, and a few extra-hardy echeverias. We are keeping our eyes on these succulents though as we are facing another cold snap and don’t want to lose these mother plants. How sad that would be!?!

Brett ordered more lights for use in the garage. They are red/blue LEDs that, according to his research, should promote root growth. Our plan is that once spring hits and we temper the succulents to be outside again, the natural exposure to sunlight will make the body of the succulents grow extremely well, especially since we will have focused these past few months on root growth. I’ll keep you posted on this as it progresses. 

Beyond organizing and cleaning up the succulents in the garage, we are prepping succulent products for the Night Market coming up on 2/1. Sweater weather pots and red rocks will be used to make the living succulent pots more festive. The 3D printer is employed full time now, it’s busy printing new pots and key chains. I can’t wait for their debut!

We are looking forward to being at the Vancouver Night Market again, this time at the new location, Warehouse 23. Stop by and say hello on 2/1 from 5-10pm.

Thank you to everyone who continues to follow along with our journey. Let us know if you have any comments or questions, we are here to help any way we can. Have a great day! 

 

  • Basically Empty Now!
  • TIP: Use Foil on the Sills to reflect more light to the plants
  • Red & Blue LED lighting
  • New Editions to the Collection
  • 3D printed pentagon pots!
  • The Set Up– IT IS SO CROWDED
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Product Updates for 2019

With the new year rang in, we are rolling out new merchandise! We hear you that keeping succulents alive is tough work (see our previous blog posts for examples of our struggles, they are very real) so in response, we are adding non-living merchandise crafted and sourced by yours truly. We will continue to grow and sell small-batch succulents, of course, but our original business model cannot thrive on selling plants alone, especially in this climate and with the limited space we have available.

So with that, we are introducing the following products! Please let us know what you think in the comments. 🙂

  • Cards – Adriane is really into puns. She has created greeting cards to include with purchases, or to be purchased on their own. We are working on the printing logistics and ink-friendly options. 🙂 
  • Stickers – We are in the process of designing stickers for branding purposes on our projects and other designs for sale – waffling between bumper stickers and transfer stickers (for windows and other smooth surfaces). Any succ-scribers have an idea for a succulent sticker? Let us know in the comments.  
  • 3D printer ideas – Keychains, Earrings, Rings, Stencils, Galore! Brett has set-up the 3D printer and we are finding that what it can make is going to send us to another level of success. We are at the very beginning phases of this, but be on the lookout.
  • Paper Projects – At the Vancouver Library, we stumbled across a book about making 3D paper plants. Naturally, we had most of the supplies needed to do the craft, so here we are. So far created is a Christmas Cactus. Y’know, it is rather tough to get an Exacto knife to cut exactly how you want it to. Stay tuned to Instagram to see how these turn out.
  • Aloe You Card
  • Pricked You Card
  • Paper Christmas Cactus & 3D printed pink plant pot

We will continue to be at Night Market Vancouver into 2019. With the generous support of our patrons, we can afford the $60 entry fee. Thank you to those of you supporting us!

We have a few new venues in sight for 2019:

  • Vancouver Farmers Market- hope to be at the weekly Salmon Creek Market starting in May ’19- application in progress.
  • Wine Fest in May– more details to come as we get them. Going to be a busy May if all things work as planned.
  • We are preapproved to vend at the Craft Beer & Wine Fest in Vancouver, WA this June. With at least 2500 people expected in attendance, this means BIG things for Suburban Succulents brand exposure. We will keep you updated on this project!
  • Catch us *monthly* at Night Market!
  • We will be here June ’19, will you?

Lots of excitment brewing in the world of Suburban Succulents. We will post again in the next couple days to update y’all on the status of the succulents growing in the garage and around the house. *Teaser- more lights are on the way*

As always, let us know what you think! Have a great rest of your day.