Hi everyone, this is Midnight Springs posting on his behalf again. He was discharged on Monday almost exactly 72hrs after admission and we are now in Pittsburgh for Tekko. I drafted this entire thing for him on Thursday when he still couldn't really use his hand, but he's able to now, so next post will be him again!


There are a couple designs that needed some edits in the proofs. For the most part, they're all fine but we also have some samples further along to show you, which show what's up.

These samples are majority still just metal that is showing the mold details, there hasn't been a lot of cleaning up done.

1) chocolate bonbon:


The area of transparent enamel (the goo of the bonbon filling) couldn't just be hanging out there like in the original, it needed a thin line of raised metal at the bottom of its body. Its mandibles also are super small so that cut out area there will be basically "recessed" instead.

2) lemonade has to have a different backstamp on it because it's majority clear enamel, and it had to be increased to 50mm so that the details could come through (the clear enamel requires thicker outline metal apparently...)

If lemonade's size difference is a huge issue with people we can work out swaps or refunds. The enamel in it is just showing the only solid/opaque coloring!

3) He wasn't warned when first being quoted that the boba pearl legs of the boba spiders were questionable even though we inquired, and the transparent enamel portions had to be made larger to work out...so their proportions have changed slightly.

I know it looks like the taro has no cut-outs around the head but I promise it does, it's the exact same mold as the strawberry. This is with some random metal flakes still attached and that gets cleaned off for final pins. These are still 35mm, the issue for lemonade was mostly that the space between the pearl eyes is really tiny...

Blueberry is approved so far, doesn't have printing yet.

Same for strawberry!!

Caramel apple's mold was made wrong, not according to the proof, and that's being changed. 

The stars for the dango are already made which was super fast, but for some reason they attached jump rings over 2x as large as they always do to my (MS) jewelry...I had a talk with them and they're fixing it. So that will be shown next update.

Otherwise, everything is still as indicated in the last update, thank you!! 

-Midnight Springs (approved of by CC)

OOPS, P.S.: The above sign-off also means there's no NEW info about surveys. I'm sorry about the misleading title, I have no idea why I did that. We'll both know more soon since he's recovering well!

We hit our base goal! Thank you so much to everyone!!! im so excited to see everybody's (mine included) pins be brought into reality, I appreciate everybody's support. Strawberry spider is next, now let's see how many stretch goals we can hit! 😊🕷🕸

Hi everyone,

I'm posting on behalf of Cryptic, he's been in the ER for going on over 36hrs, 24 of those already having been on IV antibiotics, and they want to keep him on them an additional day at minimum. An injury he got presumably at work started doubling in severity every day until it became a clear emergency, this was the 2nd time in an ED for it but the first time that it was taken truly seriously. He had to have a minor surgical procedure on his right (dominant) hand, is now staph, and can hardly use it. 

In a couple days I will post again on his behalf about how the pin proofing process went and a couple changes that had to be made (namely lemonade is now 50mm tall but I'll explain why, and we can offer compensation if that's not acceptable). I got sent manufacturer WIP photos of most of his spiders, since we're using the same manu, this morning - so I can include those in the update! 

Because of this, we had to cancel our Oddities & Curiosities appearance this weekend and lost all our expenses involved. I was and am incredibly worried about him and am so glad he finally let me drag him to the ER this week, but it remains true that now we're in a pickle until after Tekko this upcoming weekend (which will be...SO rough to do like this...), potentially further. Because we unfortunately still have to get ready for Tekko ASAP - I'm participating in 2 stamp rallies, one of which I'm hosting, and sunk cost for this one is even higher - surveys will be even more delayed because I'll have to do the bulk of work for both of them. 

I don't know what to say for us about our planned collab pin campaigns that we wanted to do at the end of this month other than it'll have to be delayed proportionately with the surveys which are now send date TBD. 

Thank you everyone for your patience and understanding! PLEASE take care of yourselves and your health!!

(posted by Elena, Midnight Springs, and approved by CC)

Hi, so I'm just about ready to launch the preorder store/send out the surveys!

There's some changes to availability for the surveys. Since I just paid for the pins (aside from dango), there's now limits to how many people can pledge for for them. We also wound up with $246 left in errored funds, so with buffers in mind that means that strawberry boba remains unlocked (thanks!!!).

These are how many people can add on from surveys or preorder store

I don't think it will show you any of this on checkout except that it's limited in general. That's why I'm giving the numbers in this update

There will also be stickers available of the dango (1 each spider so it's a set of 3, all 3") and the Strawberry Boba.

And lastly I think, I'm working on getting more of those shakers so that there can also be a taro of the boba and a banana of the jelly drink style, but it's not certain yet and would only be affordable if dango is met (need $800 more raised from pledge manager/preorder store funds before shipping costs,  in order to make sure it and the metal add-ons are funded)

Any questions let me know! This should be sent to you to fill out around next week after approval from staff. 

I'm also going to try to have ready in time at least a few pins of my next idea (gem animals), so it can cross-collab with Midnight Springs' pt 2 for Monster Girl Riot. So I'll post about that soon also!!

Thanks for making my first crowdfund such a success since we met almost all goals!! I think dango will be unlocked via surveys/preorder store too. Here's their final design:

Mostly we swapped the lighting because we realized I had left-side lighting for everything else, since she did the digital art for these ones Elena defaulted to right-side for sketch since that's what she did with most of her pins. We also made the eyes bigger (the eyes will be the only enamel) and swapped recessed hearts with printed stars. There's another version of highlights though that's just glossy, can you vote in the poll below on which you prefer?

They'll have the same backstamp as the moths ("Cryptic Midnight")!

If hanami dango are unlocked as hoped for, their set of 3 is a possible part of random grab bags of 5 and 10 pins. I'm considering doing the gradient gummy candy moth (2nd place in poll) as a freebie for 10+ pin backers since there's a few of you, so they would get both freebie moths and any other freebies they qualify for

Thank you again, this is really exciting and helps me so much in building inventory so I can properly launch a shop too!! I'll send surveys around the end of this month once I'm shown how to use the pledge manager and it's set up. Apparently it's extremely complicated... Pins will be paid at the same time as Elena (Midnight Springs) since they're being made together. Might just figure out how to pay for dango upfront and limit their available pledges so they don't get overclaimed?

Getting ahead of myself but for next pins I'd like to do something related to gems!

Also: There's 13 errored/failed payment backers at over $500 total, please fix when you can! It might not've told you the payment didn't go through, so if you're not sure you might want to check so you don't "lose" your pledge/what you reserved