Papercraft Miracles is an eco-friendly handmade paper ART company
We make magical things out of paper that bring meaning to people’s lives. Each piece is handcrafted with love and little bit of magic at our solar-powered studio in Buffalo, NY.
PAPERCRAFT MIRACLES STARTED WITH A DREAM AND BLOOMED INTO REALITY.
I started Papercraft Miracles because I’ve always loved paper but more than that, I know that humans need the physical aspect in our communication. In this digital age, people are literally starving for tangible connection. Journaling by hand and a beautiful handwritten letter are medicine for the soul.
As a little girl, I was always finding ways to reuse things that most people thought were trash. I once made an entire outfit out of plastic grocery bags, including the shoes! My team and I create works of art from office shreds, fabric scraps, wilted flowers, grain from breweries and more. We source much of this material from local companies to help them reduce waste as well.
Our commitment to sustainability doesn’t stop there. Our studio is solar-powered and we only use 100% compostable packaging for our products. We stopped using new floral foam for our paper flowers. Instead we use upcycled styrofoam, net bags from produce, bubble mailers and more--all things that are notoriously hard to recycle or reuse. We also use spun cotton balls for flower centers and buds. We are always finding new ways to repurpose materials in the studio and to lower our carbon footprint. We hope you enjoy your Papercraft Miracles as much as we enjoyed making them.
Your home for gifts that matter. Because when the moment matters, the gift should too.
-Janna Willoughby-Lohr, owner & artist
Watch the video below to hear the WHOLE story of how the company came to be!
How Papercraft Miracles Came to Be
In my business, Papercraft Miracles, I make magical things out of paper that make a moment unforgettable. I know, first hand, the power of a single moment to change a life forever and I know that receiving one of my Papercraft Miracles has been that moment for thousands of people in the 18 years since I founded this business. But Papercraft Miracles was born out of the ashes of grief and destruction in a moment where I chose to be brave in the face of trauma.
Being brave isn’t surviving the traumatic experience itself; it’s what you do afterwards that takes real guts.I never considered myself particularly brave until my junior year of college.
One night, I was sitting on the porch of the dorm, when all of a sudden the wind picked up and all of my hair stood on end. It felt as if the air was charged with electricity and my heart began to race, feeling all this energy. Just then, the sky opened up and it started pouring. I stayed outside for hours, absorbing as much of this energy as I could and eventually I went to bed. But I was awakened a few hours later by the phone ringing. It was my brother, “Something happened to her…last night…we found her around midnight…she…she didn’t make it.” All of my hair stood on end, just like the night before, and I walked out into the rain.
My mother was a poet and mixed media artist so I grew up surrounded by rubber stamps and manuscripts. By age five, I had already started to write my own poems and make collages--our love of writing, creating and sharing is what brought us so close. But the main thing I remember about my childhood is that my mama never had enough time to create because she was always working one of her many jobs to pay the bills because she was on her own. After she died, I briefly debated dropping out of school but I kept hearing my mother’s voice in my head, “Do it because you can, not because anyone is going to make you!” I knew she’d never forgive me for quitting school, so after the memorial, I returned to college with a renewed purpose. But just when I thought I had a handle on life, it broke.
I went to bed the night before the spring semester started and I was awoken in the middle of the night again, this time by a fire alarm. I expected it to just be a drill, but instead I saw one entire corner of our dorm completely engulfed in flames, higher than the tops of the trees. I stood, freezing in the road, watching pieces of the roof turn to ash, pull away and rain down over our heads while we waited for the fire trucks to arrive up the icy mountain roads. Being spiritual, not religious, I prayed to my mother. I said, “Make sure everyone gets out alive.” As soon as I said it, all my hair stood up again.
We watched it burn until the walls groaned and caved in. We watched it burn until it was gone, every last room to the ground. And I was scared. But three days later, I turned to my roommate and blurted out, “All our shit burnt up!” And we were silent for a moment. Then we started laughing. Uncontrollably, like wild animals, we giggled, so engulfed in the unencumbered joy of being alive. That moment just before the laughter was the moment I decided to be brave. If I could survive all of this and somehow come out laughing, I could make it through anything. I still had my life to keep me warm.
So the months that followed the fire were full of relentless rediscovery. I continued to make art for my classes and I found that channelling these experiences and my history into artist books gave me an outlet to share my story with others in a tangible way. It was during that time that I named my business, Papercraft Miracles, because making and sharing this paper art was the miracle that saved me, gave me something to grab onto when I literally had nothing. In the face of all that tragedy, I realized something that altered the course of my life. I saw that a single moment had the power to change your life forever. Standing at this crossroads where I could give up my dream or to seize my future immediately and never, ever, let it go, I chose to be brave and to do it because I could and not because anyone was going to make me.