The backbone of the Violet Dreams Capsule collection is a surprising find. An eye catching purple lace with obvious daisy motifs. When I brought up this lace pattern during our initial product design meeting, we were still hesitant on whether this was a hit or miss, because unique lace patterns can be difficult to work with.

I was 100% on board with this lace because I love anything that's unique and hard to find elsewhere. Plus, I really liked how the purple daisies came with matching yellow dots for their centers.

Eventually, with a bit of planning, we passed the vote for this lace with a 4-1 win (you can't always convince everyone right?) and that's how Violet Dreams was born.

I've spoken about Rachel a lot when introducing this collection. But truly, she's the reason why you see Violet Dreams the way you do. So to talk about our collection without telling you about Rachel would be kinda weird, seeing as you're practically viewing Violet Dreams through her eyes.

We onboarded Rachel as a Marketing Exec earlier this year, because we loved her attitude and unique sense of style. Surprise, surprise - Rach didn't specialise in anything even remotely close to marketing in University, but she has something that education cannot replace - and that's passion.

The moment she set eyes on Daisy and Paddlepop, she started conceptualising. And it's sort of cool the way you could see her eyes shine in amazement everytime she spoke about how she would like to style the set and shoot.

Here are some of the conversations we've had while she was sourcing for the shoot. It's how you've come to see the entire set put together...like this.

We've had our photoshoots at multiple different studios. Expensive ones that cost $200/hr, more affordable ones at around $80/hr, yet nothing compares to this set painstakingly pieced together. The TV is so old and so heavy - and while we went to collect it, we burst into laughter because we had grossly underestimated its size.

The neon light with our branding logo was pulled out of storage, the little cards you see on the backdrop rummaged out from the depths of personal closets. The pastel balls part of someone else's memories, now sold to us to create new ones.

I'm always hesistant to build sets on our own, in our office, because of the gargantuan amount of work and planning that goes into it. But Rachel came along like a passion and enthusiasm filled hurricane and swept us all off our feet.

Violet Dreams is very special to me. Not just because it's beautiful to look at, but it also proof that hard work pays off. Looking at the photos after the shoot, I am convinced that set building and design - while tiring and time consuming, is a rewarding process, with rewarding outcomes.

I think I never had the courage to try previously, not only because we operate with a very lean team, but because I never had enough faith and passion. But you see, the thing about faith is that all you need is one person that has it, to spark a roaring, fiery dedication amongst the rest of us.

Talking about the set got me so excited that I completely forgot to share about the pre-launch event we had on Gather Town with some 25 customers who we sent out exclusive invites to. It's our first time running a virtual event so we had to keep the number of participants small, but we'll try to increase it!

For those that haven't been on gather.town, it's actually a virtual work space, popular amongst businesses who have to enforce work from home. It's like an office away from office and you can spend the entire day at your desk in gather.town. Your colleagues can walk up to you and speak to you, or you can hide in a private area where no one can come and disturb you.

It's truly quite fun and it's redefined our work from home experience, which is why we decided to host a small launch party on gather.town for our Violet Dreams collection.

We built a live streaming stage, a cute lil pool and a skating rink/arcade to match the rooftop theme as well as the collection theme. Most of the things you see are custom designed and uploaded onto the platform to create a unique experiencJudging from the responses of the attendees, we proudly proclaim the event to be a success 😂 Even if there was a lot of panicked screaming and hyperventilating before it started.

It was really stressful trying out something we haven't did before and having to present it to a bunch of you, but all of the participants were really encouraging, sweet and wonderful to chat with. We are truly blessed to have you guys. ✨

As a business owner, the logical side of me thinks that this is an insane amount of effort to launch 2 designs. But also as a business owner, I've never been more proud or satisfied with how this entire collection turned out.

Sure, it was hard work. Sure, we spent many nights and weekends settling on set, style, build and content. But if you enjoyed viewing this collection - that's pretty much enough reward for us.

Would we do it again?

Well, I'm a skeptic and I don't usually like to spend so much effort on one aspect of the business (because we are a lean team as I've said 1000 times haha). But I think we are going to replicate this.

Build better, cuter, nicer themed sets. And invest in areas that will allow us to keep in touch with our customers better.

Afterall, even if at the end of the day, we don't make any money from the collection, it's important to remind others that while times are hard right now and there's a lot of uncertainty, hold on to your passions and always have faith.

So thank you for allowing us to do this, for allowing us to follow our passions, try new things and keep having faith that this business will work out. Your support carries us. Your love for our designs keeps us going. 💪🏻

Our Violet Dreams collection is now live and available for purchase. If you'd like to get yourself a piece from this limited edition collection, you can do so by clicking here.