The Project I Never Knew I Wanted

If you had asked me ten years ago what I thought I’d be doing today, I would have told you I was building Planettoon®.

That was the dream.

Every creative idea, every long-term goal, every late night revolved around that world. I never imagined I’d one day be building a luxury beauty company.

Butter & Blush wasn’t part of the plan.

In fact, it didn’t begin with a business idea at all.

It began with my mom.

When she was diagnosed with cancer, I was angry.

Really angry.

I didn’t want her putting anything on her skin that I hadn’t made myself. I already knew how to formulate, so instead of searching for products, I decided I’d make them.

The first thing I made was a deodorant.

Then I found out…

She didn’t even use deodorant.

So I went back to the drawing board and asked myself a much better question.

“What does she actually need?”

For years she had complained that she could never find a moisturizer that truly kept her face and neck hydrated. Even after I had lived in Europe, where I was convinced I’d discover incredible skincare, she was still searching for that one moisturizer that actually lasted.

So I stopped thinking about products and started thinking about skin.

I wanted to understand every ingredient that could attract moisture, help keep it there, and leave skin feeling comfortable long after it was applied.

That became the beginning of what would eventually become our Luscious Boosting Water Cream.

Once I finished it, another thought crossed my mind.

“Well… if I made her a moisturizer, she needs something to cleanse her skin first.”

Then she needed a night cream.

Then I started thinking about daytime textures.

Then I wondered if I could create something even lighter.

Or richer.

Or silkier.

Somewhere along the way, my thinking changed.

Instead of asking what my mom needed, I started asking myself something completely different.

“Why am I buying shampoo if I can make it myself?”

Then it became body care.

I’ve always loved a great body scrub, so naturally I wanted to create my own.

Then body creams.

Hair care.

Products for my daughters.

Products for my friends.

Products for the men in my family.

I never sat down and said, “I’m going to build a collection.”

The collection built itself because every time I looked at something in my bathroom, I wondered if I could make something I loved even more.

Before long, my studio was overflowing with ingredients, bottles, jars, notebooks, samples, and formulas in every stage of development.

Family gatherings turned into product testing.

Friends rarely left my house without taking something with them.

If someone mentioned dry skin, I had a cream for them to try.

If someone’s hair needed help, I’d head back into the studio to work on something.

If someone fell in love with a particular flower, I started thinking about how I could capture that feeling in a body cream.

Giving products away became normal.

I never thought of them as products.

To me, they were gifts.

My daughters kept telling me the same thing.

“Mom, you should sell these.”

Every time I laughed.

“No.”

That wasn’t why I made them.

I loved creating them.

I loved seeing people happy.

That was enough.

Then one day my son Andrew looked at me and said,

“Mom, stop giving your stuff away. Just open a company already.”

It wasn’t some dramatic movie moment.

It was one sentence.

Simple.

Direct.

But it stayed with me.

For the first time, I allowed myself to imagine that maybe these formulas deserved to leave my studio and find their way into other people’s homes.

In June 2024, I purchased the Butter & Blush domain.

Seeing the name on the screen made everything feel real.

And terrifying.

There was still so much to do.

Every formula went back onto the formulation bench.

Ingredients changed.

Textures evolved.

Packaging became an obsession.

Labels were redesigned more times than I can count.

Nothing was finished simply because it worked.

It had to feel right.

It had to perform beautifully.

It had to earn its place in the collection.

Then, in September 2024, I applied to become a vendor at the Aventura Mall Farmers Market.

That application meant far more to me than anyone there could have known.

My very first job, when I was sixteen years old, was at Aventura Mall.

The idea of coming back years later with a company I had built myself felt surreal.

At first, they told me they didn’t have space for a vendor like Butter & Blush.

I remember thinking,

“You’re right… because there has never been a vendor like me.”

So I didn’t give up.

I kept sending them updates.

New branding.

New packaging.

New product photography.

Texture images.

Every improvement I made, I shared with them.

I wasn’t trying to convince them with promises.

I wanted them to see Butter & Blush becoming what I knew it could be.

Eventually they called.

They had changed their minds.

The only catch was that I’d have to wait until after the holiday season.

Looking back, I think that was exactly what needed to happen.

Instead of waiting, I accepted a space at the Downtown Holiday Village Market in Miami.

That market taught me everything.

How to build a display.

How to pack for an event.

How to set up.

How to tear down.

How to talk about products I’d spent months creating.

Most importantly, it gave me confidence before returning to Aventura.

On January 10, 2025, Butter & Blush officially opened at the Aventura Mall Farmers Market.

Walking in that morning felt different.

I wasn’t just arriving as a vendor.

I was returning to the place where I had my first job, this time with something that had started as an idea at my formulation bench and grown into a brand of its own.

That moment meant more to me than any sales number ever could.

Looking back now, I realize Butter & Blush never began with a business plan.

It began with one question.

“How can I make something better for my mom?”

That question became another.

And then another.

Before I knew it, I wasn’t just making products for her anymore.

I was making them for my daughters.

For my family.

For my friends.

And eventually, for people I had never met.

I never set out to build a beauty company.

I simply kept following my curiosity.

One formula became two.

Two became ten.

Ten became a collection.

And somewhere along the way, without ever planning it, I realized I wasn’t just making products anymore.

I was building Butter & Blush.

For years, I believed Planettoon® would be the project that defined my life.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Because sometimes the most meaningful chapters aren’t the ones you spend years planning.

They’re the ones that quietly find you while you’re busy solving one simple problem.

Butter & Blush was never the project I set out to build.

It became the project I never knew I wanted.