Sponsor Giveaway from Armadillo Dreams

It’s with great pleasure that I welcome Dustin and Amanda from Armadillo Dreams to Natural Suburbia as our new sponsor. They will be sharing their story and offering a gorgeous giveaway too!

I give you Armadillo Dreams;

Tell us about the beginnings of your business and how it has developed and grown.

When we first started Armadillo Dreams, it was mostly a hobby business that we did in the evenings and weekends when I wasn’t working at my day job. It didn’t take long before we knew we really loved the business and wanted to grow it into a business capable of supporting our family. At first we only had toys in the shop that were ready to ship and that were natural finish. After about 6 months we felt that we had mastered our painting methods and started making painted toys. It was around the same time that we started making toys “made to order”. This allowed us to really focus our time on the toys that sell and to have more time growing our catalog. Currently we are up to about 200 toys. This year we are continuing to grow our catalog and regularly release new toys. This year we are working hard on growing our blog, so that our customers can get to know our family even better. We are also working on our local following this year by getting a booth at our local Saturday markets, Summer festival and Fall festival. It’s going to be a busy year!

Dustin, Amanda and their beautiful family

Who or what is your inspiration?

Our two children are our main sources of inspiration, Lucy (age 6) and Lincoln (age 2). We also live in beautiful Central Oregon, which is know for it’s abundance of nature and sunshine.  We are surrounded by multiple forests, the Cascade mountain range, desert, lakes and rivers. We are also just a few hours away from the Pacific Ocean. We live at about 3,000 ft. elevation and we experience all of the seasons here in a pretty dramatic way. We get lots of snow in the winter and most days are near or below freezing. In the summer it gets really hot and dry with some days over 100 degrees!

What is your creative process?

Once we come up with an idea for a new toy Amanda goes to work drawing and creating a pattern. The pattern then gets traced on wood and taken out to our backyard wood shop where it is cut and sanded. Then we bring the toys back inside where Amanda wood burns them. We then both do painting with AP certified non-toxic watercolors. Once painted and dry, the toys are sealed with natural beeswax polish. Lastly, the toys are photographed and listed in our shop. There are a few trademark details that I’ve left out, but this gives you an overview of what we do. We also take a lot of pride in our packaging when toys are ordered. Each toy we send is carefully wrapped in tissue, placed in a natural cotton drawstring storage bag, wrapped in more issue and then sealed with a cute Armadillo Dreams sticker. We feel that opening a package received from us should be like opening a present or be ready to give as a gift.

What do you enjoy most about your business?

My favorite part of my job is reading the feedback we receive from our customers. After sales are complete, customers generally leave us publicly available feedback in our shop and/or send us an email. It’s usually not just short “thanks for the wooden toys” types of messages either. Our customers will usually write a few sentences to a paragraph about the toys they received from us. We really enjoy reading stories about how excited their children were to receive the toys and how they helped their children to have some great imaginative play time. Sometimes they will tell us about how their child wanted to take the toys with them everywhere and even asked to take them to bed with them. Hearing stories like these warms our hearts and gives us a really good feeling about what we are doing. It’s our fuel to keep going and to continue expanding our business!

 Some of the beautiful items on offer in the shop.

Are there any new exciting products you would like to tell us about?

We have been working on releasing new toys regularly, usually 1 or 2 new toys per week. Here’s a few of our latest creations…

Peacock

Three Billy Goats

Rainbow Mushroom House & Gnomes

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo

Armadillo Dreams Social Media Links:

Website

Etsy Shop

Blog

Facebook

Twitter

Giveaway:

For the giveaway we are offering one lucky winner a 3 month surprise toy subscription ,valued at $30.00!!

With our surprise toy subscription, the lucky child of your choice will receive a handmade, surprise wooden toy in the mail every month for 3 months! Each month’s toy will be valued at $10 and up and will be selected just for them, by us. They may receive anything from an animal, to a figure, to a small set of toys, to something seasonal, or a brand new toy that isn’t even in our shop yet! The first month we will send a surprise toy to the child of your choice along with a printed card explaining the subscription. They will receive a toy each month for 2 subsequent months.

The giveaway is also open to international entries!

To enter this giveaway;

Please leave a comment in this post, to earn extra entries, share this giveaway on your Facebook page, Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram. Remember to leave extra comments each time you share:)

The winner will be chosen on the 28th of March and will be announced here in this post.

Congratulations to:

We love these toys!! So sweet.

Dustin and Amanda, thank you so much for sharing here and for your beautiful giveaway.

To become a sponsor on Natural Suburbia, please contact me on lindadawkins@mweb.co.za