The Shop Story

Hello, and thank you for taking the time to read our story! My name is Jackie, and I am the owner and production manager at The iCraft Studio.

The iCraft Studio was founded in 2015 when I caught the crafting bug while DIY-ing my first wedding. From the equipment and materials I had purchased to make the décor for the wedding, a successful gift personalization business grew. My passion for crafting was emboldened when friends and family started asking me to design and make things for them and their other friends and family. Since then, my reach has gone even further, and I have crafted gifts and decorations for birthdays, holidays, bachelorette parties, “just because”, and more! During the early years, three different brides used The iCraft Studio to make their DIY wedding decor possible.

From a young age, I’ve had a talent and desire for creating. Whether sculpting with clay, model-making, or painting ceramics, I took as many art classes as I was able. While working towards my BFA in Interior Design, I gained essential business skills when taking control of deadlines and staying strong and focused under pressure. I also mastered numerous computer programs that continually help expand my business today. Most of all, I nurtured my creative side while spending hours in studios dreaming of designs and bringing them to life.

With a full-time day job as a 3D design visualization specialist, I was lucky enough to continue spending my days dreaming, designing, creating, and building. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, my employer went out of business, so it became time to focus elsewhere. Serendipitously, while my mom was cleaning around her house and I began building my own wedding bouquet with Sola wood flowers, my mom found a needlepoint sign my grandmother made for me shortly after I was born–one of very few things I have from my grandmother, and something she created herself–“Even love make flowers grow.”

Something felt reassuring about this, and it was also a reminder to me that, despite my early intentions to run this “side business” alone, I am so lucky to have a wonderful and supportive husband who joined my one-woman operation. Now we run the buesiness together, following in the footsteps of my parents who have owned a custom woodworking business together for more than 40 years!

In late 2019, I began working with Sola wood flowers when arranging bouquets and decorations for my wedding in 2020. Thankfully, we had planned a largely DIY wedding before we knew things would so drastically change from the impact of COVID-19. I had begun experimenting with coloring processes for wood flowers and found how much I really loved working with the medium. I loved how I could customize the colors to exactly match my wedding decorations, wedding color choices, and outfits.

So, while The iCraft Studio began in the vinyl gift personalization world and ran successfully as such for five years, something was missing. One name on a cup or plushy after another became monotonous and really lacked the creative aspect that launched The iCraft Studio from the start. In comes flowers, my husband, and the return of that creative spark.

After the virus started taking its toll in the United States, the prospect of having our wedding as planned began steadily dwindling. I started using some of the flowers I had ordered for the wedding decorations to create Mothers’ Day gift arrangements. A small batch of pre-made arrangements quickly sold out, and I began taking custom flower arrangement orders. The positive response to the wood flower arrangements was so encouraging, especially in the darkness of the early pandemic. My husband and I adjusted our wedding plans to keep our planned date, though with a much smaller attendance and ceremony. The day couldn’t have turned out more perfectly. (You can see pictures of how the decorations turned out here, and read about our progress and thought process here.)

Since then, I am now happy to report that our shop is growing rapidly. We have been grateful for the need to expand the business with additional equipment, machines, and space. In late 2020, we upgraded to a brick-and-mortar storefront when the business started spilling out from our two-bedroom NYC apartment. The apartment could not handle a vinyl personalization business in addition to a wood flower business, so I made the decision to largely end vinyl gift personalization (except I don’t know if I’ll ever stop making birth announcement plushies, because they make me so happy).

From personalizing gifts on the kitchen counter to having a dedicated bedroom for the shop in our apartment, we now have a dedicated studio where our clients can come in person to see our production process and we can better serve our customers. Schedule an appointment and see the shop in person!

Working with brides has been so rewarding and truly one of my favorite aspects of revamping The iCraft Studio. I love being able to help create a vision with them and bring that vision to life.

Brides can be involved as much or as little as they want. Weddings are also an opportunity for me to take my years of skills with 3D design and bring it to the floral world. Sometimes brides will ask how large centerpieces will look on their tables or how we can arrange them on the mantel at their venues, and I can go into my design programs and illustrate them to scale right on the computer! I also love giving brides the opportunity to bring the wedding of their dreams to life, the way I was able to have mine.

The Shop Story

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