What are PODITEES?

"POD" stands for "Positivity on Demand". Therefore, "Poditees" are Positivities on Demand. This is my little way of putting positivity into the world around me and into my own life.

Positivity helped me through a very dark time in my life. At my lowest point, I started to write positive affirmations every day. For a long time, they felt like total bullshit. I had no idea why I was writing things like, "It gets better" to myself when I didn't even believe it. I would write cliche things like, "One step at a time", and "You are growing from this." It became a constant in my life and, in a way, grounded me. After a while, I started to really look forward to what positive message I was going to write for myself that day and it began to really heal me. Well, I don't know that the positive affirmations were doing the healing, but they were one constant I had throughout the whole process.

I began to put positivity into a physical form when I created my first patch - "Kindness is so Gangster". I was trying to teach myself how to design on a free program online and this is what happened:

I created a couple other random things that I'll show you guys in later posts (stay tuned for slime Trump & remastered Snow White XD)

But I really wanted to roll with this idea. I started creating other positive messages with the same design. The hardest part was deciding what icon to put in the middle and trying to create it with zero graphic design experience. I actually created the gun with a rose icon myself, but I didn't think I was talented enough to do that for all of them. Here are a few with icons I made myself:

Here are some I finished:

And then this one, which I'm still not sure what positive message to attach to it:

Then I decided to use icons created by actual graphic designers, since I clearly wasn't one. I wanted higher quality, but simple designs:

You get the idea...

So I made about 10 or 15 of these types of designs. I was actually loving it. I loved coming up with them. I loved that I was making a nice little collection. The more it grew, the prouder of it I was. I just wasn't sure what to do with them all. Should I make them all into patches? I suppose I could, but that would cost over $1,000 that I didn't really have to spend. I could have them made into pins, but that would cost me a pretty penny too.

I decided to figure out a way to make the pins myself - then I could make one at a time, instead of buying in bulk. I thought long and hard about how I could make this happen, and did a lot of research. I realized I wouldn't be able to make a metal pin on my own, so I searched for other options. I saw "printable shrinky dinks" as an option and tried that out. I actually thought they were SO cool at first... but they were a major fail. Then, I saw "resin pins" as an option. After about a million trial runs and finding the perfect formula, I was happy with my product. (Stay tuned for another post on how I make them now).

And here we are:

I have about 30 designs right now, and counting. I plan on making more and expanding my reach. I want to focus on positive messages, since that's what inspired this whole journey, but I can see myself getting more creative with this in the future. I am printing positivity on T-shirts now as well!

Check out my website www.poditees.com if you'd like to support my crazy little hobby. Get yourself some PODITEES, as I like to say! :)

Thanks for reading my story!