Hello Backers!

All addresses were locked successfully last weekend! Today I just have a small update for backers regarding shipping & tracking, as well as some pictures of the booster packs at the end of the post.

Hello friends!

Guess what arrived: the boxes for the keychains! I am so excited to share this with you, it‘s such a wonderful upgrade for the keychains.

Every keychain has a unique matchbox-style box. The front features parts of the keychain design and some of the available animals. The back has a little visual instruction guide and the inside box showcases more animals on the side and a pretty pattern on the bottom. I also couldn’t help myself and bought colour-coordinated paper filling for the boxes🌈. This not only looks AMAZING, but also keeps it nice and safe. The boxes are also big enough that I can add the little starter pack of charms inside the box, so even if you didn‘t pledge for additional booster packs, you‘ll have something to open up and be surprised by.
The next few days until addresses lock will be spent assembling the boxes, packing up the little booster packs and preparing for fulfilment to start. This is also your reminder that addresses lock on Friday, February 14th! If you haven‘t confirmed your survey yet and paid for shipping, do so ASAP so you receive your rewards on time.

Hello backers!

They keychains have arrived, which means we are getting close to fulfilment! To prepare for fulfilment, addresses will lock on February 14th.

If you have moved since signing up to the project or plan to move in the next few weeks, please take a moment to review your shipping information. This is also your last chance to complete the survey, if you haven’t done so already.

They keychains and shaker charms have arrived and I took a break from quality control to take some nice pictures for you (or as nice as a phone camera and artificial light can manage). I think the keychains turned out absolutely wonderful, the colours are even brighter and more stunning than I hoped!
I hope you like them as much as I do and I can’t wait to show them to you all packaged up in their own little boxes (hopefully next monday, fingers crossed!!).

These little holo keychains are the freebies - everyone who backed during the campaign will get a random one!

I’m excited to see this project enter the home stretch. Are there any other questions you have ahead of shipping? Let me know in the comments!

Viktoria

Hello and belated happy new year!

I hope you’ve enjoyed a relaxed start to the new year, or at least a fun one! After finishing all the art I was able to take some time off for the holidays and now I’ve been really excited to get back to work. Let me catch you up on what I did the last three weeks!

I am in LOVE with how this project turned out, the colours and fonts I chose and the cute little critters. And while I originally planned a more low-key approach to product packaging, I may have since gone completely mad… Every keychain will now come in a pretty, themed matchbox!

Check out these sketches and mock-ups:

I scoured the web and finally found a company in Italy that can print the boxes at the size I want and in the low quantities I need. That means, every keychain will receive a box unique to their design!
Designing product packaging is an entirely different skill to drawing animals and it was great fun and a good learning experience to work on it!

Of course I didn’t forget about the booster packs in all this excitement. With around 250 booster packs preordered I needed to find a packaging solution that is secure, pretty and not too complicated. Needless to say I scrapped my original idea of hand making little bags pretty much immediately. Instead, all booster packs will come in small, heat-sealed bags. This way they are child-proof and won’t open during shipping AND I still have space to get all the information on them. Here are my mockups for them:

This is going to be more of a DIY project. I will design a front and back sticker for every booster pack, 25 in total, heat seal the bags myself and the stick the matching sticker to it. Not going to lie, I‘m quite excited to try out my heat sealer 👀

All products are now in production or being shipped to me, with the exception of the keychain boxes. The keychains themselves are currently going through customs! I’m fairly confident that almost everything will reach me at the end of January.

As products come in, I’ll unwrap them, assess the quality and buy additional shipping supplies as needed. Then it is also time to sort out the booster packs and break in my heat sealing machine.

Currently I am expecting to be done with quality control and the booster packs by the time the boxes for the keychains arrive, at which point I can start with fulfillment. The first packages will be shipped out in mid February!

One last update: If you participated in the Trivia Challenge, you might have been wondering what the promised stickers are going to be 👀 Well I went back and forth on it a lot, but I finally decided on a biodiversity themed sticker for every participant, featuring some (critically) endangered animals, and a snow leopard sticker for the winning team (Team Snow Leopard yay!)

That’s it from me for now! Let me know your thoughts on the designs and my packaging ideas and if you have any questions, leave them below! Once everything starts arriving I’ll be back with pictures!

All the best

Viktoria

Happy Holidays!

It‘s been a busy few weeks here, what with Christmas markets, family visits and finishing up all 175 animals for the shaker keychains! In today‘s short update I‘ll cover some of the recent developments, design changes and timeline.

After some back and forth I gave the final approval for production of the shaker keychains, shaker elements, lanyards and freebie holographic keychains yesterday, which means production has started!

You know how I said that I‘ll do alternate designs on the tundra, desert and meadow keychain only if the total item count after the pledge-manager is 20 or more? Well we only unlocked that for the tundra…but I really like the winter meadow and midnight desert! So I maaay have just done them anyway. Take it as a little Christmas present

There have also been two adjustments with the animals, but I hope you‘ll understand and appreciate the changes I‘ve made.

In the Mountain Asia Pack I‘ve exchanged the wild ass for the Argali sheep. The wild ass is very similar to the Indian onagar, available in the Desert Asia Pack and the Argali could be a stand in for the American Bighorn sheep, for those of you that missed some American mountain animals.

In the Desert Asia Pack I‘ve exchanged the Indian red scorpion for the Djungarian hamster. The main reason for that is that I really struggled to make the scorpion look cute and matching the other animals in style. The djungarian hamster is found in the Gobi desert and has also become a popular species as a pet. 

The keychains are expected to ship mid to late January, at which point I‘ll take a few days to do quality control and put everything in cute packaging. That is also the time when I will lock addresses! So if you are planning to move in January or February, keep that date in mind.

Until then I am working on two major areas: other add-ons and packaging design!

Here is what will happen next:

So as you can see, while the most nerve-racking part is done there are still a few things left to deal with. I am especially excited for and daunted by designing the packaging. I really want to make something cute but, realistically, it has to be both in budget and not too annoying to assemble. Once I have some sketches and ideas, I‘ll share those with you. 

What do you think of the changes I made? Do you approve? Please let me know your thoughts and questions!

Viktoria