About

What is The Blooming Wildflowers Project?

The Blooming Wildflowers Project promotes, supports and spreads the word about indie design, handmade artists, indiE-commerce sites, and independently owned brick and mortar shops. It's about being a conscious consumer and rejecting our culture of disposable shopping by making more thoughtful purchases, and incorporating indie items into our daily lives. It seeks to inspire readers to support these independent creative businesses and it encourages artists and owners to keep producing and growing. With it, I hope to educate shoppers about the power of buying indie and shopping local, and to help artists and owners by featuring their shops and items.

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So, what exactly qualifies as a "blooming wildflower"?

1. Any artist producing handmade art, design, jewelry, fashions, etc.
2. Independent and emerging designers, whether they hand make their items or not.
3. Independently owned brick and mortar shops, galleries or boutiques.
4. Independently owned e-commerce boutiques or galleries, as well as independent designers selling or promoting their own brand via their own site.
5. Vintage and/or antiques.
6. Indie artists and designers whose designs are featured in collaborations with chain stores or larger retailers.

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About me
I'm a marketing specialist and copywriter, hobbyist photographer and jewelry designer, and grad student who is passionate about shopping local, buying handmade and indie, downtown revitalization, and...beagles. This blog is all of those passions rolled into one (although I'm still trying to figure out how to bring beagles into it without sounding ridiculous- buy handmade, own a beagle?). I love fashion, art, design, photography, good food, good wine, animals and traveling.

I currently live in downtown Lancaster, Pa., a small, vibrant city about an hour and a half from Philadelphia, with my fiance and our two fur babies, Lucy (a beagle) and Stella (a lab).

I believe that buying local and shopping indie can change our cities and our culture for the better.

When I first started this blog, it was just a place for me to ramble about my grad school experience, my Etsy endeavors and life in general. Gradually, I started focusing on strictly handmade items, but I found that...restricting. So I expanded the blog beyond just handmade to emerging designers (handmade or not) and any independently owned brick and mortar or website. Think of it as your personal shopping guide for handmade, indie and brick and mortar boutiques.

With this blog, I hope to make a difference, both the to artists, designers and entrepreneurs whose work and businesses I write about, and to the readers who read about them and support them. It's time to put a little more money into our local businesses and little less into the big boxes. And while I can't say that I'll completely stop shopping at chains and big boxes (I still love me some J.Crew and Anthropologie), I do hope to keep incorporating more and more independent stores into my shopping (especially when it comes to things other than clothing) and I'm hoping I'll inspire you to do the same.