THEME DAY: Favorite Corner Store

Today is THEME DAY, and this month's theme is our favorite corner/neighborhood store.  Today also marks the first anniversary of the official closing of my store, Paper Moon. For that reason, I thought I would post it and show you a bit of the Moon.

When I opened Paper Moon in 1998, it was the first scrapbook store in Middle Tennessee.  We were not, however, just a scrapbook store.  We also sold rubber stamps (art), paper arts of all jewelry-making supplies, polymer clay, and more.  We offered classes in stamping, scrapping, bookmaking, papermaking, cardmaking, and more.  The night I opened the store, I joked that you could throw a beachball from the front to the back and not hit anything.  That changed over the years as my customer base grew and I was able to add more product.  The week before I announced that I was closing, the store was packed with displays and merchandise (above left).  Note the lime-green wall at the back of the photo.  That wall was not there when I first opened.  I added it in 1999 or 2000 when our classes became popular and we needed a separate classroom.

From the time I opened the store, we were very active in the community, both locally and globally.  The first year, customers donated over 800 handmade cards to Cards For Kids, an organization that sends a card a week to chronically ill children.  After 9-11, customers donated over 1100 cards to send to victims' families and to the volunteers working the site, and we sent cards to soldiers in Afghanistan

and Iraq, as well as to soldiers, children, and seniors in hospitals and nursing homes.  My customers donated almost 500 pounds of food to Second Harvest Food Bank after Hurricane Katrina, and we collected over 100 pairs of shoes for victims of the tsunami.  We also regularly collected and donated paper art supplies to programs at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital, Alive Hospice (above), Gilda's Club, and various schools and organizations.  At holiday time, we collected and donated books for children, and food and necessities to the animal shelter. 

Out of everything that I did with the store, our involvement is what made me the most proud.  I don't mean to brag, but in 2005 and 2006, Paper Moon was awarded one of only 10 Scrapbook Retailer Awards by Scrabook Retailer Magazine, no doubt due to the fact that we were so involved in helping others.  I could not have done it without my great customers.

The world changed a lot in the nine years that Paper Moon existed.  In 1998, the internet was just a baby.  We were at peace (relatively speaking).  The US economy was relatively good. 

Unfortunately,  a number of things beyond our control had a huge negative impact on the US economy.  I made the difficult decision to close my store when the economic situation in this country started affecting my business.  While I was keeping my head above water, the stress was getting to be too much.  While it was a hard thing to do, closing Paper Moon was the right thing to do.  Gas, food, utility, etc. prices have continued to climb.  Today, people are more concerned with buying essentials and paying their bills than with buying discretionary items.

People always ask me if I miss the store.  I don't miss the store, but I do miss the great customers that I had.  Fortunately, a lot of them have kept in touch with me, and our friendships have continued to grow.

The two photos toward the bottom left and right are from the store's last few days.  The photo of my employee and good friend, Julia Holman, and me (Can you see the sadness on my face?)was taken just after we closed the door to the public for good last May.  And, the photo above right is of the store just before I walked out the door for the last time.  I took this photo from approximately the same place that I took the first photo on the left above.  

One final note:  I was pretty lost for a few weeks after I closed because, quite frankly, for nine years, I worked in the store six days/week.  I was researching something last July when I found Paris Daily Photo and then CDP.  They pulled me out of my funk, and the rest, as they say, is history.  ;-)

Sorry I'm so long-winded today!

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