Updates

 Hey everyone ~ 

Alright everything is settling down again so I'm zeroing in on this project. Its been unacceptably long but we're still having major production troubles. 

So where are we?

Next couple of months, we're focussing in on getting the minor arcana done. Work is already underway. 

I have a couple of very rough sketches to illustrate the concept;

I know these don't look like much but bear with me. For the numbered cards, we're going to have one image with ten individual creatures. For each number the right amount of creatures will be coloured/detailed, the rest up to 10 will be silhouettes. Then the four court cards will have one more detailed individual, similar to the major arcana. The Queen card will have a blood moon alternative colour (I can't remember if I promised more than one court card per suit would have an alt, but I will check). 

(More work is done but its not really something I can show until its ready to come together.)

First up we're doing the Hoff crab, so named because they have a hairy chest. Amazing. They live on deep heat vents in colonies so large you can't see the rock beneath them. They will get much more detailed art than this paltry sketch, I promise!

We also have the pearl octopus, which live in huge octopus gardens. And lantern fish, which are among the most abundant vertebrates on Earth, although they are much more common in the twilight zone they have been recorded in the midnight zone. Our fourth is undecided, and we're taking suggestions. We do have crow pins for this campaign, so if you make a suggestion and we use it I'll send you a feather. 

Orders for the new crab tarot pins will go in soon, we were waiting to add them to the PnP pin order. The bulk of the notebooks and sticker books and stationery is due to arrive this month. 

Overall I want to say we'll be getting to fulfillment by Q4 2026 but a lot could go wrong before then. Or right! But I am wary of making promises at this point. Just know I'm working on it as hard as I can. 

Thanks for your patience.

Hey everyone ~

We've had another pin set back, sorry guys. I missed a massive mistake. 

They missed this part of the design on my order sheet. Unfortunately, I didn't notice it on the proofs. So all the rest have it coloured in, as far as I can see; but none of the spider crabs do. Including the BM and glow versions T_T. So they all have to be re ordered. I only just noticed it. Fortunately the molds don't need to be remade so the cost is less, but even so.

So that's underway right now. Work is continuing in the background. We are currently moving house, we'll be moved end of Feb and after that updates should increase. 

Thanks for your patience. 

Hey

Sorry everyone. I really wanted to make a big update but things are changing quite rapidly in the background, and I don't want to say anything that's immediately rendered incorrect again. 

Most of the pins have arrived, but a portion are MIA right now (they were in the same order as the missing Mythical Garden pins). We're not sure if they were sent out but to the wrong address, or if they're not finished yet. 

Half of the stationery stuff is here, but the notebooks and sticker books are still in production. 

We're having issues with the card production. Initially the manufacturer said they could work with the artwork we provided them, but the samples we keep getting back are unusable as a deck (the colour is varying between the cards, so the backs aren't identical). On the first samples before the project launched we were told it was just the specific finish we'd picked out. Since changing the finish, they are saying its the colour profile and specific shade of green/blue that I'm using. This is an ongoing issue that we're trying to fix. 

Unfortunately, changing that around is taking so much time that the minor arcana hasn't progressed much. Right now, we're of the opinion that if it gets to a point where everything else is completed and ready to go and the minor arcana isn't, or at least very nearly completed, we'll have to remove it from this campaign. If we do go ahead with that, we'll refund everyone that paid for it already. I'm not 100% if its necessary yet, but it might be. 

Otherwise, we've done a total overhaul of our shipping fees. We had a lot of emails about it jumping up from low to very high with just one item, so we've added a lot of steps in between. We also added a few more country specific prices. We will be applying the US tariffs soon - it should be 10% of your item total. It might come up slightly less, but it absolutely shouldn't be more, so let me know if its not totalling up correctly. 

Keep scrolling to get a preview of a couple of the pins we do have (I need to schedule a photo shoot asap). We're taking a short break from now until after Christmas, but hopefully in Jan I'll be back with good news.

Happy holidays, everyone ~

Not the best pictures. When they're all here we'll do the full set one by one so you can be sure of your choices; the designs have been changed slightly due to manufacturer's requests.

The designs and colours are pretty identical on the cards as they are as minis.

Hey everyone

Sorry this is kind of an update promising to update later. This project is due a big status update, I'm just waiting to hear from the manufacturer. I'm not sure how long that will be, but I promise there's a lot of work going on behind the scenes right now. Here's some factory pictures we got from the manufacturer recently;

We sent off over 60 designs, in the end! There's still a ways to go.

We ended up having to do a lot of redesign work behind the scenes, due to issues with our chosen manufacturer, and some things not going to plan. It looks like there might be some items we cannot fulfil for this project - but if that's the case, we will be refunding those items in full. Anything that we had to change significantly we'll also be previewing before we lock orders/charge cards, in case you'd like to change your order. The next update will be an important one so please keep an eye out for that. 

As a follower of this project, you should get an email soon advertising our holiday market. As part of that market we will be selling a few Midnight Ocean items. This is not at all how I would like to handle it - usually I wouldn't sell anything that hadn't been sent to backers yet. Unfortunately, we have been really let down by a couple of manufacturers this year, to the tune of thousands of pounds. Manufacturers that we trusted and that we've worked with before. Most of what I'm listing is either prototype or sample items, overstock due to minimum order quantities or seconds (b grade) pins. Nothing will be cheaper there than it is here. You can still cancel items in the add-on store here and order there to recieve them faster if you want to, but it will cost an extra round of shipping (and the selection there will be much more limited). I am sorry for this, I would much rather we had fulfilled months ago and you already had your items in hand.

Thank you everyone, for your patience. Please stay tuned for the big one, soon :).

 Hey hey ~

I've had a few requests for an update about US shipping and the new tariffs and what not, so I just wanted to put out a quick update. 

Unfortunately, for the most part all I can say is 'wait and see', and I know that's not very reassuring.

In short I have no intentions of stopping shipping to the USA, but the shipping costs are going to go up, its inevitable.

The new system requires that sellers pay duties and taxes upfront on US shipments, putting the burden on us to charge you (the customer) at the point of sale, rather than you paying customs directly after your item arrives. If we don't pre pay and have all of the paperwork correct, then you are charged a flat rate fee of $80 when your item arrives. (If this happens to you with one of our packages contact me immediately.) Our UK postal service (Royal Mail) put out an announcement that they will be setting up a service that allows us to do all the prepayments and paperwork online, and they'll handle the rest. This service goes live next week. I won't know exactly how it works, or exactly what the fees are, until it goes live.

The duties/taxes are different depending on the country of origin of your items. All of our items are manufactured in China, therefore that's their country of origin.

For the Midnight Ocean and Mythical Garden campaigns, prepare for your shipping to increase in cost before cards are charged. We don't know how much by yet; and with everything changing there's nothing to say it won't be different again before these projects are ready to ship. We strive to keep our shipping costs as low as possible, and I will continue to do everything I can on that front. I know that the Midnight Ocean has a lot of heavier items, and we might be able to refund just those items to people who need to get back under a weight bracket for cheaper shipping. Bear with us; we'll handle it closer to the time. 

For now that's it, just know that we are keeping an eye on things in the background. If I find out anything concrete then I'll update again.