Lately I’ve been folding any kind of paper I can find into kusudama flowers trying to find the perfect materials to use for our wedding flowers. I recently discovered that Post-It Notes make the coolest flowers. I made this pink flower from five post-it notes while waiting for Kepa to finish work.
Awesome, right?
The paper is a great texture and sticky but not sticky enough to work. They are already cut into squares so it saves me having to do that with each sheet of paper. Plus they even have purple post-it notes.
So I found my solution, right?
WRONG.
Post-it note are awesome and I’ve always loved using them. But unfortunately like many things the price is highly marked up here in New Zealand. A cube of post-it notes (which is what I would need at least, probably several) had costs ranging from $15 to $30.
Yep, $30 for a stack of post-it notes. Granted that’s only $22.6 USD or $23 USD including the cost to exchange money, but it’s still a lot. It’s even more expensive considering the options here are limited and I would only want to use one color of four in a pack in those. The whole point of doing paper flowers is to save money so this is not an option. Even the cheapest option is still $11 USD.
Even worse, I did a quick search online and found out that they sell the post-it notes at Office Max in the US in a “Purple Passion” cube with varying purple shades that would be PERFECT for the wedding. And they only cost $7.99 per cube with a deal to get one free when you buy two. So much cheaper! OMG! It’s almost perfect, except they won’t ship here. US only. Why can’t the Office Max in NZ carry the same products? At the very least? They have different colors and products and they cost more. All I want is a big bunch of purple post-it notes!
It’s frustrating because these seem like such a great solution to my dilemma of what paper to use, yet they are just out of my reach. I will be back in the US in a couple of months but I wanted to have the flowers folded by then. I wanted to be almost finished. I have a lot of free time right now in NZ that I hopefully won’t have when I’m back in Memphis hopefully with a job and other responsibilities.
Once again I’m just frustrated by this whole process. Or maybe just living in NZ while trying to plan things in the US. I don’t know. I just wanted some post-it notes. I didn’t know it was going to be such a big deal. Wedding planning is ridiculous! Guess I’ll start looking for other paper options now.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s the same in Australia. Things were SO MUCH CHEAPER in the UK and ordering from the States – I cringe everytime I see the crazy markup on wedding stuff here.
Can you have them sent to your Mom’s in TN, then she could forward them to you? Or would the shipping cost make all that moot? When my family lived in Spain, a lot of things my dad bought online couldn’t be shipped to them, so he used my address and sent them to him.
I could but the shipping cost is pretty high. Plus my mom is busy and by the time she gets them shipped and they arrive I’ll be leaving for the US (May). So it’s not worth the hassle to try to rush her to accomodate me.
I’ll buy them and mail them to you. If the shipping is less than $20, you can call it my wedding gift to you.
Haha. I don’t know how much shipping would be. I would want you to do that if it was going to be an outrageous amount. But I am tempted by your offer and would appreciate it. If you want to check what shipping costs would be for three cubes first I understand.
OKay, someone here in NZ might have a hookup for us and post-its. So don’t worry about it. Okay? If this doesn’t work I’ll just wait and get them myself in the US. Thanks tho!
I know you wanted to make the flowers before you leave, since you have the time, but isn’t it going to be a huge pain to transport them back to the US? I assume they would smush? So maybe the hassle of getting the paper combined with the hassle of getting them back home means you could just do that home? You could even rope some of your bridesmaids into helping you and have a fun girly wedding night? Just a thought! I can’t imagine trying to plan a long-distance wedding (especially across the world), so I applaud basically ANYTHING you get done. :)
I’m not fully making them, just folding all the petals. That’s the most time consuming part because there are multiple folds just to make a single petal (and five petals for one flower). I want to get the folding out of the way while I have time and am not yet sick of it then transporting them flat is easy since I’m not taking much with me back home. Yeah if I was glueing and making full flowers it would be silly but I had a plan that would be easy to transport them. Had one.
None of my bridesmaids live in the same area so unfortunately I couldn’t have a super fun bridesmaid folding party with everyone. I’ll be lucky if I get to see all of them before the wedding. I would loooove to do a fun thing like that, but like everything else wedding related the logistics aren’t in my favor.
I can also mail them to you– how many cubes do you need?