Last month I got a great email in my inbox from Out of The Box Sampler inviting me to share a sample for their monthly box. This was great news and I started trying to figure out what in the world I could make 25 of that wasn’t gonna take me a whole month, but that would also be a sample of the items that I have in my handmade store Hella Delightful.

There isn’t much there, but I hope to add to it as projects show their faces. At the moment I am in a new location and need to find some wild spots that are forage-able, so all the stock I have is it. Anyway I thought of making bundles of half-sized yarrow stalks, but I found the size too small to be usable counting the I Ching.

I had collected a bunch of cherry blossoms during the spring this year and had taken photos like mad as well and was really wishing I could find a good way to share these photos. As a kid I used to make boxes out of old Christmas cards to look like miniature Christmas presents to hang on the tree as decorations, I used to love doing it, so I decided to try making some tiny boxes out of the photos of cherry blossoms. I may have made them too small in retrospect, but I didn’t really collect that much of the cherry blossoms.

Adding my favorite mind-spice aromatherapy mix to the boxes and making the bottom half out of Shan paper which is porous and will easily hold the smell of the cardamom, rosemary, cinnamon and other spices. I wrote a big SNIFF ME on the bottom of the box and stuffed them as full as possible with cherry blossoms and called them Mind Spice Buttons. When someone opens it the cherry blossoms will spill out. It is best just kept closed, in the purse and just taken out and sniffed once in a while, if your brain is getting foggy, or your memory needs jogging, or even if your spirits are low and you need an lift or inspiration.

I do have to confess, even though I know I put as much as I could right now into the Out of the Box Sampler, I have just had a look through some of the other samples offered and I have to say I feel embarrassed, as my one little mind-spice button is so tiny :-(. Next time I will have to do at least a set of six per sample to be able to show my face again! Have a look through the sample boxes, there are some really cool things in there and I am amazed at what is being offered as samples! I want a box, what a cool idea.