Two months after the silver play button arrived at my door, I finally opened it — and if you watched how that unboxing actually went, you'll know it wasn't exactly a solemn occasion. This short video is a celebration, a thank-you, and a small window into what this channel and this community actually mean to me.
What we cover
The unboxing itself — complete with the letter from YouTube, the surprise mirror in the box, and a lot of solo-at-home chaos — alongside a genuinely heartfelt thank-you to everyone who's been part of the TreasureBooks journey.
What you'll learn
Why I'd been using the award as a paperweight for two months — not because I wasn't moved by it, but because I wanted the unboxing to mean something, and an empty house finally gave me the chance to do it properly (or improperly, as it turned out).
What the number actually means to me — and what it doesn't. A hundred thousand is a number. What it represents is something else: the fact that other people found a passion in bookbinding and paper crafting the same way I found mine. That's what makes me genuinely happy. Not the count.
What this community has felt like from the inside — from people who've followed from the beginning, who've left comments, who've become part of something that started as a hobby and somehow became a full-time life. My hand was shaking filming that thank-you, and I wasn't performing it.
Tips & gotchas
There aren't any crafting tips in this one — that's not what this video is. But there's something in here that might be worth sitting with: that the things we make, and the communities we find around making them, carry a meaning that has nothing to do with scale. A number on a plaque doesn't prove the work matters. The work proving the work matters is what gets you the plaque.
Also: if you have children, apparently you can become completely blind to a Barbie sitting directly in your shot. I watched the footage back and genuinely did not see her until then. That's just life.
There's more hard work behind it than anyone watching from the outside would guess, but I love every second of it. And what I love most is knowing that somewhere out there, someone watched one of these videos and felt that click — the one where a craft goes from interesting to theirs. That's what this little silver square on the wall means to me. That's all it means. And it's more than enough.
