2025 wrap up

Written By Joanna Stegena

It’s the end of the year and I am completely ready for a break! The weather has already given us a heat wave and lightning storm, along with bushfires. The Noongar season of Birak, the first summer is hot, but I don’t think we’ve had a lightning storm like that in a few years. I am not looking forward to more heat of summer, but I am ready for hanging with family and good food - and I bet you are too!

I've wrapped up the business for the year. I've packed and unpacked my car dozens of times this year, created a new product when I got muddy at a market, added water birds and blue wrens, and even went on a podcast!

By the numbers, 2025 held:

  • 11 markets (10 attended)

  • 4 new stockists

  • 3 scrubbed sandshoes

  • 2 workshops

  • 1 podcast (will come out next month, I think!)

Out and about

I signed up for 11 markets this year and made it to 10! I love meeting people at markets, hearing about the wildlife that visits their garden or their favourite flowers. I made it through heat exhaustion, wind (everything has fallen off my tables so many times at almost every market!) and a mud pit at Kalamunda in spring. I scrubbed the mud off 3 pairs of sandshoes after that one! I only dropped out of my last market because it was a heat wave and I was completely done from the Belmont Carols the night before.

I even made time to go on Herb Your Enthusiasm podcast at the last Kalamunda Garden Festival, which was absolutely delightful! Another highlight was my first conference market - the Australasian Ornithological Conference.

I faciliated 2 watercolour workshops this year - one for the City of South Perth’s winter arts EVOLVE, and one for Treeby Estate’s Harmony event at Lake Treeby. Both were delightful, with plenty of people keen to try watercolour painting and learn a little more about common Australian native garden plants.

Products - bestsellers and new designs

The bestsellers for the year were grevilleas & new holland honeyeaters on greeting cards, everlasting daisies on bookmarks and the garden bird and bobtail sticker sheets.

I added 3 new products to my shop - notepads, key chains and shiny metallic stickers.

Notepads were the first new product type. I created these to match the tea towels, making a sweet little kitchen gift set for shopping lists and to-do lists along with the tea towels that are perfect wrapped around a warm freshly baked bread.

The sticker sheet range was expanded in August. I spent a lot of time agonising over exactly which water birds and plants to put on the new sticker sheets. The water birds around Perth tend to go from freshwater to saltwater wetlands and estuaries rather than having a clear preference, which made it difficult to decide how to group them. In the end, I’ve started with a somewhat-freshwater set and will create a saltwater one in 2026. I did let myself add some sweet little grey cygnets to the set!

Splendid blue fairy wrens were a brilliant addition to the garden of products this year, with the blue wren sticker sheet already looking like it might become a favourite in 2026. I also created metallic stickers out of the sassiest female blue wren and the most protective male blue wren - he’s all fluffed up to protect his family!

The key chains were a spur-of-the-moment decision to create, after I got completely muddy at the Spring Kalamunda Garden Festival in September - no one was interested in paper products with that much mud around! My kids immediately gleefully stole some for their backpacks, and I’ve found they’re handy on lanyards and spare keys!

New stockists and making connections

This year also saw the addition of 4 new stockists:

  • Toasted Carine

  • Victoria Park Centre for the Arts

  • Leschenault Community Nursery

  • Southern Land Creatives

I was next to Leschenault Community Nursery’s stall at the Love The Lesch festival early in the year, and my cards caught their eye, resulting in my first stockist outside Perth. Then late in the year, Southern Land Creatives (who makes her own beautiful jewellery) put out a call for creatives, announcing that she was opening a brick & mortar and needed products to fill it! So Coral Pea Design’s products are not just outside Perth, they made it into a shop outside WA! Which ties into one of my goals for next year - get my products into every state & territory of Australia.

I'll be back in January with all my plans for the year, but in the mean time, wishing you a happy holidays and a peaceful New Year!

Joanna Stegena
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