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Report: Local Mom Opens Semi-Successful Diorama Business Inspired by Weeks of Personal Hell
“Don’t Let Dioramas Ruin Your Spring Break!”
Oregon, USA — After being sideswiped by two school projects over winter break — a diorama and a volcano — a local mom has found a new calling.
“I just thought I could take parents’ suffering and transform it. You know… into money,” she said as she glued a monkey to a backdrop of cardboard trees.
Johnson noticed that for parents who were making the diorama — err, helping their kids to do it themselves — for the first time, the project was much more time-consuming than for second or third-time parents.
Even the choice of a shoebox turned out to be problematic as Johnson’s second grader insisted that “the teacher said the box shouldn’t look like THAT!”
After getting her own mother to source a boot box from a local shoe store, continuing the age-old tradition of leaning upon one’s parents for help with a school project, Johnson began the days-long process of meticulously crafting each animal for the rainforest diorama, only to feel she had to allow her son to “help” with the finishing touches, therefore creating a product that she was less than proud of.
“I can make a better diorama than he can any day,” our crafty mom said as she cut out a hand-made stencil of a poison dart frog.
“Anna turned hers in already,” her son shared with her on the day before winter break.
“What? How?” The letter had come home just yesterday in the orange folder with notice of a project that was due in two painstaking weeks when the children would (finally) return to school.
Her son shrugged. “She just took some plastic animals and put them on a branch.” He picked up a piece of felt from the pile of materials Johnson had gathered.
“Anna has an older sister,” Johnson’s spouse whispered. “Maybe they saved the project.”
And this is where inspiration struck. Anna’s family was on to something. They would not be decking the halls with bullet ants and green anacondas this holiday season; Anna’s project was done.
And how much would that feeling of “done” be worth to families?
Johnson’s business model involves building kind-of-high-quality dioramas with Velcro parts. That way, it’s like your child is still helping, but they’re not ruining your work.
For an extra $50, you can buy a “booster pack,” inspired by the Pokémon cards her son has been obsessed with since receiving that dreaded starter pack at Halloween. Say your first kid makes a tundra with a polar bear and a lemming. Well, two years later for your second kid, you take that same tundra scene but swap out the animals for a musk ox and a snowy owl. Even if you have the same teacher, they’ll never know.
Johnson now exclusively gives shoes and boots as birthday and holiday gifts, repacking them in paper grocery bags and keeping the boxes for her work. Her business, Saving U Headaches Inc., grossed $1,000 in her first year making and selling dioramas. She spent approximately $600 on supplies and 600 hours on ten dioramas — clearly a winning business.
When asked about her spring break plans, Johnson looked up from the anteater she was cutting out and replied with a sigh, “What vacation? Spring break is high diorama season.”
