The Story of Push-Pop Confetti™

I have wanted to tell this story for a while, the story of our Push-Pop Confetti™! I rarely get the chance to sit down and blog a story, but I wanted to find the time to write how the Push-Pop Confetti™ came to life. The inspiration from the original Push-Pop Confetti™ came from my love of the nostalgic ice cream treat we all remember from childhood and of course, parties and celebrations. I have always loved celebrations and parties, so when it came time for me to announce my first showing at the National Stationery Show in 2013, I wanted to come out with a bang… literally. It was January of 2013 and I was coming up with what I wanted the invitations to be. I really gravitated to my "party in a box" as I say idea. I filled the box with a custom balloon I had made, a letterpress card, a custom party hat, and Push-Pop Confetti™. I knew I wanted there to be confetti in the box, and I knew I wanted it to be more than just a bag of it. I wanted it to be memorable and wanted it to fly in the air! When coming up with the idea, I originally tried to engineer my own out of a toilet paper roll and a wooden dowel. Needless to say, there is a reason why I am not an engineer. I wanted the Push-Pop Confetti™ to have that cardboard body like the push-up ice cream we all remember from childhood. I was even going to do a little wax cover over it like the original dessert. Once I realized that my toilet paper roll push-pop idea was a bust, I began searching for clear tubes with no intention of returning back to my original idea. I stumbled across a company in the USA that manufactured their own design of a push-pop container. I read about it and realized that people were only using these for desserts, but I figured, can't you put anything in them? I ordered 100, which seems small now as we are ordering palettes of 6000 at a time every other month now, and I began to experiment. I decided to do a cardboard/chipboard bellyband wrap around it to give a little kick-back to my original idea of using cardboard like the ice-cream push-up. I letterpress printed each label and still do, although we have some other labels for different variations now like an "All That Glitter's" foil stamped label. When I first started creating them, I cut each piece of confetti by hand. There was no shiny Mylar as I could not find sheets to cut down into small pieces. That has all changed, and sparkly-color is the name of the game! We still manufacturer all of our push-pops in our downtown Jackson, MS studio. Each of them has been topped with a sticker to remind you that the container is food safe and can be used again, stuffed with confetti, branded with a label, and sealed to ensure it does not pop in transit (and from curious children's hands). Since then, we have developed the Eco-Friendly Push-Pop Confetti™ which features a corn starch base confetti that dissolves in water and lavender buds for a nice scent, the All That Glitter's Push-Pop Confetti™ which is an all metallic confetti base, and a Gender Reveal Push-Pop Confetti™ which reveals the gender of a baby by using a label to conceal the blue or pink color in the middle and gold confetti on the outside and bottom (when popped the color is revealed). Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think confetti would be such a huge part of my life, but I love it so very much! It brings sheer happiness! Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy our Push-Pop Confetti™ as much as we love making it! Kristen