From the Capital Journal:
Rossville resident Kylee
Sims launched her business with a simple goal — figure out a way to work from
home, so when her young children started school, she would have a reasonable
income.
She started while her children were still home, figuring it would
take a few years to make the business viable.
Instead, in a short amount of time, her Etsy business,
DragonfliesNDahlias, grew to where she was losing sleep to meet orders.
“It’s just grown right out from under me. It is such a blessing. I
love it,” Sims said.
Artists often refer to “happy accidents,” and for Sims, the
accident was tapping into a booming market. She had seen jewelry on Etsy made
from handwriting samples, and for Christmas last year, she wanted to order one
for her mother to commemorate Sims’ maternal grandmother, who had died earlier
in the year.
Sims wanted the necklace to say “love you so much mom,” in
handwriting she had taken from a card her grandmother sent her mother.
But the Etsy artist making the handwriting necklace was so backed
up with orders, she couldn’t get it done until January. So while she waited for
the original gift, Sims created a single-use stencil of the words and
transferred them to wood, and then painted the gift for her mother.
When her mother opened the emotional and heart-warming gift, Sims’
brother was stunned.
“My brother saw it Christmas morning, and he was like ‘Shut up.
What are you doing?’ ” she said.
Her brother insisted she open an Etsy store making the special
pieces of artwork that transferred everything from signatures to entire letters
onto wood.
So often, the stories that accompany the customized artwork leave
her “blubbering,” Sims admitted. There was the girl whose father died in June,
a month before her parents’ 45th wedding anniversary. Her father sent his
daughter to purchase an anniversary card when he knew that he was dying, and
the daughter had the words on the card transferred by Sims into artwork.
“So what he wrote in that card about her being the best thing that
ever happened to him and making his life whole, she got that after he was
dead,” Sims said. “It feels so freaking important. His words were so beautiful.
You can imagine what a heart-wrenching moment that must have been, for her to
open that card on their anniversary.
“This customer wanted her mom to enjoy those words — and what they
represent — every day. It truly is an honor to do this work. I pray over each
piece — for the family they will impact, for healing, for peace. I am eternally
grateful for this opportunity.”
Almost every story is like that.
At a Kansas City art fair, Sims met a couple who looked around her
booth and left, and when they came back, she gave them her spiel about the
handwriting signs.
“Both of them just kind of stopped and stared at each other,” she
said. “The man looked at me and said ‘We both lost our spouses to cancer in the
last 10 years or so.’ ”
With tears in his eyes, the man told Sims about a perfect note his
late wife wrote to their son that he would like put on a sign.
“I got to write a note straight to (the son) to let him know what
it was and who I was and how much his parents loved him,” she said.
Sims becomes a part of many family celebrations through her
business. On a board for a wedding, she copied the signatures of eight
grandparents who had passed away, but whom the family wanted to remember during
the celebration. She has taken signatures from property deeds and sticky notes
left on the mirror.
“I love what I do so much that when I have spare time, it’s what I
want to do,” Sims said. “I probably don’t spend as much time catching up with
my girlfriends.
“I run a business online, and we don’t even have Internet,” she
added, laughing.
Sims does much of her Etsy work on her phone, but occasionally
drives from her rural home into Rossville to use the Internet at the library.
Her husband, Jeff, often will come to remind her that it is time
to stop for the night — although shortening her hours doesn’t look likely as
she already is swamped with holiday orders.
“I feel very passionately
about these pieces. … I feel like these sentiments are too important to be
boxed up in the attic or tucked away in a book on a shelf,” she said. “We
should enjoy the words our loved ones leave us every day — they help make us
who we are.”
