Define Possible: How We Made Half a Million Seed Bombs...in a month!

Back in February, we announced that we were taking on our biggest project yet, but with one catch: we couldn’t say what it was until we were done!

Finally, after a month of planning and training, a month straight of exceedingly physical work, 60 temporary employees and 9 artisans on our studio crew and 450,000 seed bombs, (yes that’s right almost half a million seed bombs later), it was over! I think I’m still tired…but I had the time of my life.

We were hired by Camp.com, a company based in New York City, that “Explore[s] and discover[s] the wonders of nature, arts & crafts, sports, theatre and fun,” offering family-fun activities and products.

It was a normal Friday in January, checking in over coffee with my studio assistant and the phone rang… It was Camp.com and they said they Googled “seed bombs” and our website popped up. They asked me if it was possible to make 500,000 seed bombs…in about a month…and I said “YES! Define possible.” My assistant, Ruby, looked at my like I had lost my mind.

The order was to create four different seed bombs, each with a different perennial pollinator flower, oh and did I mention there was a 6 week deadline? Yep. We had to get moving quickly!

We also did this project right in the middle of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, adding an extra challenging layer to the work process. We operated the seed bomb room in two six hour shifts, seven days a week. We sanitized the spaces and all the equipment after every shift, ran air filters constantly, propped open the door between shifts to add more ventilation (even though it was winter in Buffalo, NY! Brrrrr!). Everyone had to wear a mask at all times, we took temperatures at the door and everyone had their own tools and equipment to work with. I’m so so proud to have pulled off such an intense job safely and we didn’t have any cases of COVID exposure during the whole thing.

The Green Seed Bombs had Purple Coneflower (Echinacea) seeds inside. The Teal Seed Bombs had Cosmos Sensation Mix seeds inside. The Yellow Seed Bombs had Lanceleaf Coreopsis seeds inside and the Orange Seed Bombs had Red Corn Poppy seeds inside. We had to put up a color/seed chart so we made sure to use the right seeds in the right colors!

Some colors were messier than others….

To reach our goal, we had to make about 125,000 seed bombs in each color. One color at a time!

And if you’re thinking that takes a lot of hands, you’re right! A whole team of them in fact!

It took a team of 60 temporary Seed Bomb Makers, to make the seed bombs into the specific round shape and size they needed to be. And trust me, we brainstormed tons of different ways to make these faster but the only way that worked was one at a time…by hand. (Although towards the end some of the miracle-workers were doing one in each hand! They were incredible!)

Even with 60 new employees making the seed bombs, I needed more people to keep the project running smoothly. I needed artisans that knew their way around a studio, to properly lift 50 lb buckets of pulp over and over and had the mojo to complete such a large art production. The designated “Pulp Crew” worked in back-to-back shifts on a very tight schedule to make sure everything kept going and that the pulp never stopped being made until we hit the mark. This crew of powerhouse women and non-binary people knocked it out of the park and quickly became a well-oiled machine. First, making pulp in the basement in our three gigantic blenders, then draining and squeezing the water out of the pulp until it was at the perfect consistency to form the seed bombs upstairs. Next, lugging the super heavy buckets up from the basement to the holding area, mixing in the seeds and lugging the drain water and empty buckets back downstairs, and then maintaining the 3 huge drying racks, making sure each and every little seed bomb was 100% dry before they packed them up in 25 lb boxes, ready to go to the client. And did I mention they also washed and sanitized all the tools and equipment that the Seed Bombers used at the end of each shift and many times cleaned the entire studio space at the end of the night?? Yeah, they did that too. And when they weren’t doing all that, they sat and rolled seed bombs too, often sitting on a bucket when we didn’t have enough chairs. This tight crew was amazing and I could not have pulled off this project without each and every one of them.

Top: Hannah—The Dry Master, Bottom left: Erin—Pulp Crew, Right: Alicia—Pulp Crew

But you can only do the same thing everyday for so long…it’s safe to say that sometimes…..things got a little wacky, but all the laughs kept us going when we were running on fumes!

The long hours didn’t stop us from having fun, or from making new little seed bomb pals.

From left to right: John, Paul, George and Ringo

Through blenders breaking, worn out backs and cut up fingers, a batch of seed bombs sprouting, dance parties during ball rolling and constant pulp making, if it wasn’t for our amazing team, we would have never finished. Thank you to all of our seed bomb workers! We even had local art friends and family volunteer their time to help us hit the deadline. My husband even stepped in during the last few days to make seed bombs and he HATES getting his hands wet, so that was a major sacrifice.

When it was all said and done, more than 423,000 seed bombs were shipped off to Chicago on a truck, driven by my amazing husband, Bryan! To put things into perspective the grand total boxed up was 104 boxes with 25 lbs pounds of seed bombs in each one.

Their final destination was also a secret to us, but we finally found out about two weeks after they were delivered to the factory! Our handmade plantable seed bombs were used to fill bio-degradable garden-themed piñatas for Lowes Spring Garden Giveaway event, at Lowe’s stores across the US. I managed to snag just one (surprisingly it was hard to get and was the last one at my local Lowes) it hangs above my work desk and continues to inspire me that anything is possible.

Landing this job and getting to work on this project with such an amazing crew was life-altering for me and for Papercraft Miracles…but the part I’m most proud of was being able to inject over $130,000 in wages into my community to help support so many people who had been hit really hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and aftermath. Being able to do what I love for a living is amazing but helping others to support their families while having fun? What could be better than that??