Quynh Nguyen, the artist behind Pink and Posey

MEET QUYNH NGUYEN

FOUNDER of PINK AND POSEY, THE POSEY BOX, and co-founder of PAPER TALK

It was a revelation for me to work with crepe paper. My imagination and creativity grew by leaps and bounds. I have never been so excited and found so much joy until I started to make paper flowers.

Hi, I’m Quynh and I am the artist behind Pink & Posey. I am the founder of The Posey Box and Paper Talk Podcast. I specialize in building bouquets and arrangements for brides and commercial works. My work has been featured on Nordstrom, Fran's Chocolate, Creative Live, Carte Fini’s Feature Artist, Lia Griffith's Artist Interview Series, The Handmade Showroom, Grapheme Letterpress, Pho Bac Seattle, Oscar & Co, Caroline Tran Photography, 100 Layer Cake, KING5 New Day, Seattle Evening Magazine and Refined Seattle.

Backing up a bit, in school I worked toward a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, but when I graduated, I had a double major in Marketing and International Business, with three minors in Management, International Studies (with an emphasis on Asia), and Japanese. I went on to receive a master’s degree in Finance. I used my education and experience to start a bakery called Sweet Posie, which turned into a full-blown catering business. I loved that work, but I eventually shifted focus as I discovered the amazing world of paper flowers.

My paper flower story began five years ago while coordinating a wedding. The bride asked if I could also create a paper flower bouquet. When I reflected on it afterwards, I realized that the best part for me was creating the paper flowers, and I thought, Could I turn this into a business?

When I started out, I thought my focus would continue to be weddings and special events, with personal custom orders rounding things out. However, as my business grew, there were other opportunities that allowed me to showcase my work. I discovered that I loved doing large commercial installations with national brands like Nordstroms, Frans Chocolate, Jo Malone, and many others.

Just as important as my passion for the art of paper flowers, I wanted to share my knowledge with others and help the paper flower community become more than just a hobby. This led to the creation of The Paper Florists Collective. As of 2020, we now have over 5000 members across the world, with a clear mission statement to share knowledge, connect, and elevate the artistry of individual paper florists.

During all of that time, I was creating a large variety of paper flowers and producing a lot of scraps, both big and small, from all my projects. I was too busy to organize and to reuse the scraps. It was so much easier for me to start a new flower with a fresh roll of paper. A friend suggested I pack them up and sell them as mystery boxes. I had so many scraps, I was able to box ten of them up and put them up for sale. They sold within hours! This resulted in the birth of The Posey Box as I realized there was a market for subscription boxes.

When I first started The Posey Box, it was purely a subscription of art and supplies, but the box quickly outgrew that concept. The Posey Box members wanted more: they wanted paper flower tutorials. Fortunately, I was able to pivot and make that happen. At the time, paper flower tutorials weren’t common, so it took some determination to find the right platform, define my brand, and figure out the hundreds of other small details needed to make the box successful.

I knew one way to make my Posey Box stand out from the other online courses was to make better quality videos. I quickly learned how to film, edit video and audio, and create graphics. My business continued to grow, but so did my neverending to-do list: researching the next flower, creating the tutorial, providing all of the extra information and tips that made The Posey Box special, promoting the videos, creating the website to host the boxes, handling all of the customer service, and packing The Posey Box each month. Most importantly, I had to develop relationships with the members, vendors, and other artists. On top of this all, I was still creating paper flowers for special events and commercial installations. I had too many tasks to juggle and was working nonstop. I realized that I had to let go of something in order to ensure that The Posey Box would be the best subscription box of its kind on the market.

Luckily, through my connections in the paper floral industry, I was able to collaborate with well-known paper flower makers to develop The Posey Box tutorials for me. I wanted an instructor who could concentrate purely on developing the best written and video tutorials. This took a big responsibility off my plate and allowed me to plan and guide The Posey Box in the direction that I envisioned.

Creating The Posey Box was a big undertaking, but now, after almost two years, it stands out as one of the top paper flower online courses available.

Building up a business in the paper flower industry had a huge learning curve, but it’s been an absolute joy! Throughout it all, I’ve never lost my love for the creative and fun side of paper flower making. I can’t wait to see what the future holds for my paper flower journey.

If you are looking to add to your floral library, I would recommend these beautiful flower books that are currently in my flower library. These are the books that I constantly reach for when I am looking to get inspire and trying to recreate a flower when I do not have a live specimen. They are filled with beautiful floral photos filled with information about each flowers and gorgeous details of the centers and petals formation, plus a book on how to draw the flowers.

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