I've been hard at work this past week getting all your orders out, and I'm so happy to announce that I'm finally done! All your orders have now been packed and the last 4 will be dropped off at the post office on Monday.

If you have not gotten a shipping notification- please double check your email! For folks who have not filled out their survey or didn't fully finish it, I have resent your survey! I have a handful of people who have filled out most of their survey but did not get to the confirm address page or put in their card at the end, and for these folks I have resent your survey so you can finish it and I can send your rewards!
You will have until the end of the week (Saturday March 7th) to update your address and card information and still receive your items. If nothing has been updated by then, I will cancel your pledge.

If you can't tell if your order has been shipped or if there was an issue with your card/ address, please let me know so I can check. I want to make sure everyone gets their items if possible! Comment here, email me at [email protected], or message me on Instagram for questions and concerns.

For anyone who's card was never charged or was declined multiple times, your pledges have been canceled. Unfortunately without payment I can't send you any pins or stickers. If you still want to get any of these campaign items, you'll be able to purchase them through my Etsy store.

Speaking of Etsy, I'm including a special discount code for all of you at the end of this update! If you missed anything from this campaign, or just want more of my art, please check out my Etsy and use the code provided for a discount :) I'll be adding items from this campaign to my website in the coming days, so if you don't see these pins/ stickers there right away, please check again later.

Have questions? Please let me know in a comment, email me at [email protected], or message me on Instagram! If you think your pledge is missing an item or you received the wrong one, please let me know so I can fix it.

That's it! Thank you all again for supporting this project and helping me fuel my dream of being an independent artist :)

Class is almost ready to begin, and your welcome packets are being finalized and readied to ship out!

All the pins arrived to me safely last week, and with the help of another professor (a good friend of mine), I was able to get all of these sorted, quality checked, and prepped for shipping! Photos of these will be sprinkled throughout the update-

Most of the backing cards I ordered are here, and I'm waiting on one more set to arrive before I can start shipping the majority of your orders, but they should be here tomorrow. I wanted to try a smaller print shop for these and unfortunately they took a bit longer than expected to be made/shipped and each design was shipped separately :| I was also a bit disappointed in the color quality as the reds are a bit on the duller side instead of the vibrant maroon I was going for, but since these are free postcards and pin backers that often get tossed after they serve their purpose, I think they'll work just fine.

The larger postcards (left) feature the 'Welcome Packet' front design and the school map on the back, and at the last minute I decided to add some blank lines at the bottom so I can write a little thank you with your name, major, and a 'dorm assignment' for a fun little surprise when you receive your orders ;) The smaller card will be folded in half like a book or folder, with your major pins on the inside with a small school map- just like a college welcome brochure might have a school map and some goodies tucked inside!

I believe I mentioned it in a previous update, but I've had a couple people ask about them recently so I want to mention it again: unfortunately, the Pride Crest pins did not get enough orders to fund production. If you placed an order for one of those designs, they have already been removed from your order and you weren't charged for them. However, the Cold Fire Skull Candle did get funded and I was able to make those! They turned out so nice and I'm very thankful we were able to make them :)

I've already sent out the 48 hour notice that your shipping addresses are going to lock, so if you've moved recently or need to send your order somewhere else, please look for that email (which will have a direct link to your survey) or go to your profile, click on 'Your Pledges and Surveys' then on Cryptic Grove to update you shipping address if you need to. If you don't need to make any changes, please disregard :) If you have any trouble with this please let me know!

You should get an email saying your reward shipped in the coming 2 weeks or so, but please know that your items might not be dropped off at the post office immediately. I like to buy labels in bulk and pack a few orders every day throughout the week, so please don't worry if the tracking number doesn't update right away.

Great news- as you can tell from the title, the pins are DONE! My manufacturer will be sending them to me in the next day or two, then all we have left is to pack and ship!

The manufacturer also sent me photos of all of them, so here they are (grouped by major):

Some of these have a bit of a blue cast, so the colors might look a little off, but once the pins are here, I'll take some better photos in a more neutral light.

Hopefully the next update will be when they arrive, so keep an eye out for that! Once they get here, I'll still need to count and quality check everything, then its on to packing. I can usually pack between 12-30 orders in a week, with more on weekends so hopefully I should have all these done and in your hands by the end of March!

You may have already seen, but I am also running a campaign for PinTopia 2026! You can check out my latest project here- and as a backer of this project, you'll qualify for a bonus freebie sticker~

Similar to this campaign, there are also bonus freebies when you back 3 or more projects in the Fur and Food Banner! I want to encourage all of you to check them out and consider pledging to my partner projects as well :)

That's all for now~ thanks for reading!

A couple announcements for you today- first, the keychains are here! I've also finished some of the packaging designs for both pin sets and individual pins, and at the end of the update I'll share some manufacturer photos of the pins and a production update!

Great news- the familiar keychains are here! Here's our first look:

Some of the designs (Lynx and Maned Wolf) are a little more... orange than I expected them to be, but the warm color cast looks a lot less intense in person than it does in these photos. I tried to adjust them to be more true to life, but the photos definitely don't do them justice.

I don't have the packaging for the mystery familiar bags finished yet, but I will be working on those next! If you ordered a mystery bag, you'll have an equal chance of getting any of the 5 designs, but if you ordered a specific familiar, it will arrive in a clear packaging instead of mystery bag.

Speaking of packaging- I've finally gotten the design for the backer cards hammered out! I've been really struggling getting my idea looking the way I want it, but after some more research and practice with isometric grids, I have a 'school map' that I can be proud of. Every order will come with one postcard print you can hang on your wall, and all pins will come on a backer card- either a folded 'booklet' style card for Major Pin Sets or individual cards for single pins.

My plan for the packaging of Major Pin Sets was to have a college-brochure style packet that you open up to reveal the pins on one side and a map of the school on the other, and here's the (mostly) final result!

I may tweak a few things, but for the most part I am very happy with how it came out! If you ordered a Major set, it'll come in one of these folded cards and inside a plastic wrap to keep everything together.

For individual pins, I've come up with a matching (ish) backer card as well! These cards will be 3x3 inches with a QR code on the back with my linktree.

I got some photos from the manufacturer! Please note that the colors will look a little weird because of the factory lighting and the plating not being applied yet.

I have asked them to adjust the colors on a couple of designs, but other than that it looks like the pins are progressing nicely!

That's all for now! Hopefully in another week or two I can post another update with more pin photos and an eta on when they'll get to me. In the mean time, please check out my next campaign- Beetle Bakery for more of my art :) Returning backers get a FREE bonus sticker!

As always, please let me know if you have questions! I'm usually available to answer your comments and messages and I love hearing your thoughts :)

- Danny (ApothecaryOctopus)