Author: phomeak

Throughout this course, I have been working on creating what I call is my Covid project turned into side business. During these challenging times I found out I was living in a home with life-threatening levels of radon (for those who aren’t familiar Radon is a radioactive, colorless, odorless, tasteless noble gas that can accumulate to high levels in an enclosed area such as a house and become a risk to the health of you and your family). On top of this I discovered high levels of VOC’s and toxic compounds in our air, mainly due to my occasional habit of burning paraffin and soy-based candles. Knowing these factors, my partner and I knew we had to make some changes in our home for the benefit of our health. 

During the summer I hung out with my friend Carolyn, we met in school on a semester abroad in Italy. She was pretty much my only friend in my “covid circle”. She had been experiencing severe allergic reactions to and also suffers from eczema, therefore she started to make her own hand soap, lip balm, and lotion made from pure, natural, and locally sourced ingredients that contained very little if any fragrances to help her sensitive skin. 

Now, coincidently while I was seeking a natural alternative to replaced my awful habit of burning chemically harmful candles, I wanted to diversify the farm and get into beekeeping. I pushed my father to allow me to do this, and although he gave me the no-go, he connected with a local bee farmer and they began a partnership with him.

I mentioned this to Carolyn, as I was excited to have bees on our land and we both came up with the idea of sourcing some beeswax from the Bee-guy to experiment with making natural products including lip balm, creams, and candles for my home. 

With her knowledge in hand and body products and my knowledge of essential oils and sourcing natural materials we pursued to create beeswax candles that would be scented with pure essential oils using upcycled glass containers and a natural hemp wick.

Our mission from the very beginning was to produce and promote high quality, sustainable, and most importantly natural home and body products using 100% pure ingredients free from any synthetic materials and harmful fragrances.

We especially wanted to integrate as much locally sourced ingredients and support local suppliers when purchasing our materials. We pressed fresh herbs and native flowers we personally grew from seed to create a botanically inspired product line. In doing this and experimenting with beeswax and essential oil blends we discovered our business name, Apis Botanicals. “Apis” being the latin name for bee and “Botanicals” being the overall inspiration and common theme among our products. 

Fast forward 3 months later, after pouring and re-pouring over thousands of candles and hundreds of burn and air quality tests, we have curated a botanical line of candles in 4 scents being Lavender Eucalyptus (our best seller), Citrus Mint, Mulled Wine, and Unscented for those who have sensitivities to smells. We changed and experimented with our logo and packaging over a dozen times, and still may change it up.

In addition, we are proud to celebrate the holiday season with introducing a holiday themed collection made in limited quantities in special scents of Winter Forest, Candy Cane, Holiday Spice, and Candied Orange (this one was an accident). We hopped on the bandwagon and decided to make dried oranges as decoration for our mulled spice candle and discovered the amazing scent of cinnamon sugared orange. We made a second trip to our essential oil supplier in Calgary to purchase cinnamon leaf, nutmeg, blood orange, and peppermint oils to create this amazing blend. Overall, we are happy with the final result and still continue to perfect our product. We are in the introductory phase of selling our product to hopefully receive positive and constructive feedback to improve our product. 

In addition to candles we expanded to create beeswax wraps made from unused quilting remnants from previous projects, as well as new 100% cotton and linen fabrics from a Canadian company called Figo fabrics. This company supports graphic designers from all over the world to create such fun and modern fabrics I believe everyone would love to see in their kitchen. I specifically chose fabric from their Treehouse collection not only because the patterns are fun, vibrant, and colourful but because the prints were designed by Canadian graphic designer, Annie Chen. When sourcing new materials such as fabric I put a lot of research into how I can make our products stand out from the rest, while ensuring the quality and supporting local. This has been one of the biggest challenges as supplies are very limited and hard to source efficiently on a small scale. 

From this experience, we have learned and continue learning from our mistakes, working with such a dynamic natural product like beeswax is no small feat as we remind ourselves if this was easy everyone would do it. I am most proud of the fact that we were able to kick start our creativity and what positive mindset we had left into making something amazing during these difficult times. As we continue our journey we hope to grow our business and use it to inspire others, promote a sustainable lifestyle and support the local community. We bee-lieve in ourselves as you should too! 

This weeks lesson was an interesting topic, exploring a number of ways we communicate on social media using captioned images, short animated videos, or infographics.

These types of visual communication highlight a new type of language that does not need to be translated and has the ability to resonate with the audience.

In every great story, there is always an overarching theme that establishes the setting, defines the problem, identifying the main takeaway (from the characters perspective), and summarizes the happy and in some cases not so happy ending.

But what sets a story apart from the others? What makes a story enticing, relatable, and most importantly memorable? Its the characters experience and emotions that are portrayed through visual techniques that have the ability to communicate, connect, and inspire the audience on a much deeper emotional level.

As Charles de Lint once wrote:

“Once upon a time there was what there was, and if nothing had happened there would be nothing to tell.”

Below I have summarized 4 step by step principles of good storytelling, highlighing the importance supplementing a story with visuals.

Thanks for reading!

-Payton

I wrote my storytelling Twitter thread about the top 7 most random, weirdest, and in some cases grossest things I have in my home. It was inspired a material culture challenge where people go through some of their possessions and without giving the context of what it is, other people must guess what the item is and what it is used for. The professor in this material culture class had collected many things and you can imagine almost no one could guess what the objects were. This class exercise taught me a lot about why material culture is important and the key role this discipline plays in different cultures and societie’s. 

After searching through my house with a motive to find what I would perceive as the strangest things, I manage to gather 7 items that I felt made the list. I hope this story was interesting, fun and engaging. I tried to add a little suspense and sense of danger knowing that one item in particular probably should have been red flagged at the Canadian border, but at the time for all I knew it was a typical souvenir.

My twitter thread began with the #7 item and counted up to #1 to once again add a sense of anticipation and excitement. Although most of the time I would skip to the #1 thing as I do not like being in suspense. Fun Fact: I can never sit through a movie without reading the plot summary prior and I will never watch scary movies. 

I begin with a nostalgic childhood possession that created an entire collection of rocks and shells collected from every place I’ve explored. 

Then I thought the gift my friend brought me from Portugal was interesting given that I don’t even know what is specifically in it. For some reason because it’s says 2020 on it and was given to me a day before the quarantine lock down. I have some crazy belief that if I open it, I will literally and metaphorically open up a can of worms and I just can’t deal with that. 

I also own this finger stretching device that is supposed to enhance your grip strength. If you know me you know that I pretty much abbreviate every word I possibly can, so I usually call it the fingy stresser. 

My thrifted Mexican souvenir I can’t even describe my thought process when I think about how it was constructed. In my mind, it was 100% carved from a chunk of wood and I can’t wrap my brain around how they carved the different rings without them falling off like beads on a string. 

The next item I do admit that I was hesitant about sharing just because of the dead silk moth that attempted to break free, and quite honestly might have suffocated. I feel bad for the little guy but it was for the best. I did not want to be responsible for a full on invasive silk moth takeover that could of killed all Canada’s native bugs and ate entire crops of grain, what a nightmare that would be. 

The second top item I think to this day is super random but it is cool. To think that’s how the locals got their daily undercover news and gossip back in the day, its clever. It does actually still work but with the advancement of technology I can only pick up on local truck driver lingo that I can’t even translate. 

And finally, the top item that made the #1 spot. The Cow Ball. It is truly one of a kind, and remarkable that I even found this in over 100 acres of pasture land. I picked it up thinking it was a rock (blame my crazy rock obsession for noticing it) only to discover it was a super compact ball of cow hair when my dad threw it against the ground. 

Please share the strangest thing you have in your home. I hope you enjoyed my twitter story.

-Payton