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Hey - I wanted to share some pretty big news on this project. I have found a new manufacturer! 

Thanks to another Pintopia creator, Aimee (thank you so, so much Aimee!) I have begun working with a new manufacturer to get these pins made. And honestly, it is so nice to feel hopeful and excited about this project again! They have gorgeous samples of UV printing, and are confident that they can achieve the right results and make these pins look how we hope they will. Communication with them seems great and so everything is a go. 

They also are able to use the molds that they previous company made - which did actually turn out beautiful - so that is also good news. We aren't starting from scratch. So right now I am in the process of getting the old manufacturer to send the molds to them and once the new manufacturer has the molds in hand, we will begin working on getting the UV layers to print nicely at long last. I am very hopeful about everything and excited to think that this might actually get us to finished pins sooner rather than later instead of drag on indefinitely. (The old company still hasn't even giving me the new prices for the pins I tried to order and pay for in November and said this week they are still researching cheaper materials they could use before giving me a new higher quote - which just boggles my mind at this point.) 

I truly thank you guys for your patience and sticking with me as I dealt with this 🖤 and it seemed like many of you also felt it was time to start over with a new manufacturer which did help me to finally let go of trying to make it work with the old manufacturer. I will keep you guys updated of course when they have the molds, and progress we make on getting these made once and for all. 

Anyways, a big update - but a short one lol. Thank you again everyone and so excited to be moving again, even if it means starting over somewhere new. As always, love you guys 🖤 and fingers crossed I have a much better thread of updates for you in the next few months! 

Hey everyone,

A quick(ish) hopeful note: I finally have some progress to share.

I’ve been continuing to work with the manufacturer on the UV layers, and we finally hit an aha moment on part that was really tripping us up - that the light colors kept vanishing.

When trying to trouble shoot with the manufacturer, the best they could say was that the lighter inks were getting ‘eaten’ by the enamel and could give me no further explanation. (All their troubleshooting messages are this vague.) I said they must have printed light colors before and if so how did they get them to show up? Their answer was ‘We will try a different method’. Then another week or so later, they sent me new sample photos in which the light colors (which I had lightened 100x to be pretty much white at this point) actually came through loud and clear!

So in addition to dialing back the light colors to their original shade, I tried to inquire what they did differently. After a lot of back-and-forth, from what I can gather, they tried a new method they never tried before and printed my base colors first and then the UV on top. So that gave me a clue, that at least for the light colors, it may be an opacity issue. (That still doesn’t explain why the dark colors were turning into black blobs - but I keep trying to solve one problem at a time.)

With that in mind, I rebuilt the UV print file for the red dragon so that the base color and the soft UV shading print together, and I carefully erased anywhere I want the enamel to show through. The new sample looks much closer to the painting—there’s finally a full range of color!—but it also introduced a new wrinkle: a light “ghosting” halo along some printed edges. My next step is to figure out why this new method is creating a highlight all around the edge of where it prints, then tweak the file and settings to remove that halo while keeping the highlights visible.

Even with that new puzzle, it feels like forward motion at last after months of stalls, rep changes, and confusing non-answers. It is such a relief to feel like there is forward momentum. I feel like I am getting close enough now, that if this test turns out how I hope and start looking close to how I expect, I’ll at least have a strategy to the rest of the designs in small, steady batches (so we’re not reinventing the wheel each time) and hopefully get them all finished at long last.

Thank you for sticking with me through what I know has been a long road. I don’t take your trust for granted for a single second. Your patience and kindness have meant more than I can say. I’ve been living with these little birds, blossoms, and dragons for so long, and it’s a relief to finally have some good news to share. This project became my most difficult and fraught ever - and I can’t thank you guys enough for being so patient with me while I wrestle this project back into the shape it was supposed to have.

I’m including a photo of the latest UV sample so you can see where we are - full color range, but with that odd light halo we’re now addressing. I’m hopeful that in the next update I’ll be able to show you the fix and even better samples. Fingers crossed we’re finally through the thicket!

With love and gratitude,
Jeszika

Hi everyone :) 

I realize its been a hot minute since I posted an update and so I wanted to touch base with you guys real quick, so you know I haven't disappeared into the moonlight. 

There isn't a ton to report other than we are slowly working on the UV layers. Communication with the manufacturer does seem improved which is helping with being able to focus on the UV layers themselves instead of arguing over communication and prices. So though progress is slow - there are less things derailing us from working on getting the UV layers fixed. 

The latest set we are working on are the Scarlet Ibis, Poppy, and Dragon designs - but even though the in latest round we have gotten the dark areas to look nice, we still can't get the highlight colors to show up at all. I have tried again asking them why that is, because if we can figure out why the light colors aren't showing up at all, I could fix a lot of the UV layers a lot faster, but they don't seem to be able to give me any information or guidance as to why that is. Which leaves me back to the trial and error process of redoing the UV layer file over and over and sending it them and waiting for them to send back a photo of how it printed. 

The process is tedious and slow, and improvements seem slow to come - hence I haven't had much in the way of anything exciting to post. But I wanted to touch base with you guys and let you know I am still mired in this process and doing my best to inch forward little by little. 

And again, as I mentioned before, at any time, if the wait gets too long and anyone would like a refund instead, please reach out to me and let me know. I don't want anyone to feel frustrated or like they are on the hook for a project they are not happy about.

And in the meantime, I will keep chipping away at getting this project across the finish line. Thank you so much to all of you for hanging in there with me <3 

Hello again,

First, my apologies for the delay of this update! I never want you guys to feel like I am ghosting you or not working hard on making progress on this project. Unfortunately, I don't get any notifications when you comment on my updates or ask for updates, so I didn't see that a few comments were asking for updates until today, when I got an email from a backer - otherwise, I definitely would have answered sooner! I try to post an update every month or two, and this time that got stretched a bit closer to the further end of that two months than I meant for it to.

Puzzle Campaign Fulfillment - Part of the reason for that was that about a month and a half ago, I received the last items needed for my other Flora & Feather campaign - for the puzzles and art tins. So, most of last month was spent fulfilling that campaign and getting that Kickstarter officially wrapped up. It was a lot of work to get all of that campaign shipped out in a few weeks, but I did it, and it is officially finished - making one less campaign and big project for me to divide my work time between. When I decided to run both Flora & Feather campaigns at the same time, I believed that it was an efficient use of my time to run them concurrently, that it would make the process more streamlined as I worked on them together. Looking back, I realize how wrong I was, and that not only was it double the work, it was more than double, as trying to manage my time between the two made both harder. I learned the hard way that running two concurrent campaigns was extra, extra difficult, and I definitely will not make that mistake again! But at least the puzzle campaign is successfully wrapped up!

As much of this update is more specific and personal, I am going to finish up in the backer-only section instead this time <3