I've always been a "paper" girl, and I've always loved stationery and stationery/office supply stores. Ever since I started high school, I've been a dedicated planner girl. Planning, decorating the planner and pages, tracking habits, and adding a bit of memory-keeping and memorabilia always made me so happy!

When I started working full-time, I didn't have the time or interest to even think about this hobby. Almost ten years later, I started to pick up my planner hobby after my daughter Milou was born in 2016. I not only needed a place to schedule my days, but I also really wanted to document the small and big moments with Milou.

My planner itch came back and in 2017. I started searching for new brands and planner inspiration on YouTube and soon I was addicted to the beautiful spreads that Sandra from the @theSassyClub made. For the first time in my life, I saw someone using dies. She used the Lawn Fawn Cole’s ABC’s to cut out these beautiful letters and used them in her planner. Within the hour, I bought my first Cuttlebug with the Lawn Fawn Cole’s ABC’s of course, and immediately got addicted to die cutting.

I went searching for more Lawn Fawn products, and after many dissapointments and very long shipping times, I build the love for  cardmaking but not for the process of getting all the supplies. I received my easter products around Halloween, Chistmas came with Easter, or I just didn’t receive anything. I was wondering if I was the only one looking for Lawn Fawn products and other American craft brands, or that I was just the only one.

I trusted my instant passion for this hobby, feeling that I couldn’t be the only one and took the plunge to start an online craft store, specialized in card making supplies and with American Brands in stock. Cloud9 Crafts had to be a happy place, with transparant communication. But the main priority was, and still is, that customers would feel a bit of the love and joy that they give when sending someone their handmade card.

With lots of help, trust and time from my partner (Jur), we started Cloud9 Crafts in our 50m2 appartment in Amsterdam (<— check out my old blog). Cloud9 Crafts was nothing more than a few IKEA MALM drawers.

And what a journey it has been ever since! 4 years ago, we moved from Amsterdam to a small country side village in the North of the Netherlands and the store has been upgraded from a few drawers to a small 1 bed bedroom on our main floor. Of course, we, as a family, also got upgraded :D But somethimes I find it hard to see…We are so busy with “life”, that I am scared to miss out on the small wins and the intimet and precious moments together.

For a long time I’ve been longing for a place where I could document my life and my hobby, without taking too much time out of my time. Unfortunately having time for my hobby is something I had to give up. (with so much graditude!)

After thinking about it for a few years, I now finally accepted that my memory keeping had to be a “digital thing”, as in: This blog.

Thank you so much for sticking with me till the end of this longer blog, and hopefully you will stick around to see what else will bring us in future years!

Much love,

Yuki