I've currently got more than 50% of orders out. I posted last month about my health issues, and lately I've been really wondering if what I was "acutely" ill with in April was actually a newish covid variant, considering how WINDED I am all the time now. It's bad. 🫠 I already have POTS, and had mild asthma, but now it's just hard to exist without wheezing. So I'm having to seriously pace myself, and I'm getting a portable EKG I was wearing for 2 weeks taken off in roughly 13 hrs. With this, my hEDS, and my ADHD, I'm also constantly getting injured like a bad slapstick comedy (did you know it's possible to simultaneously jam your toe under and bang your forehead on the edge of an open door while trying to pivot around it?), and every time something like that happens I'm out of commission for a day or 2 so I'm trying to really race against the incidental self-sabotage.
That being said, I'm finally starting to get back to an existable baseline post-Colossalcon, and the remakes have mostly been looked through, so I've been packing things again. As a reminder, most pledges are being bundled with Chocolat Chaud's, Cryptic Compendium's, or both - and shipping costs have skyrocketed so retroactive excess shipping fee refunds for people who paid it multiple times unfortunately won't be very high, if any...
Since a lot of people also backed MGR2 and Geode Pets, and some even asked to bundle my snake preorders with them, some pledges going out are actually up to 6 orders per package and way more than I realized are actually 30+ total pins. You all are amazing, it's crazy and really heartwarming (albeit exhausting in current context) packing for like 4 hours and I'll only have half a dozen orders done, because each one has dozens of combined pins plus Chocolat Chaud's that were already packed. 🤯 Like, I'm really just blown away!! There are a lot of smaller orders too, which my stamina really thanks those backers for, but I'm just so shocked and grateful. I'm very sorry that they piled up like this, but it did give me a new perspective that I wouldn't have necessarily had if I wasn't fulfilling so much at once. I am so, so thankful.
Cryptic Compendium is also really not doing well right now but has been carding things too, and just got done sorting all the remakes and the frogs for Geode Pets. There are no longer any external barriers - "just" time and energy - to getting those orders with all 4 of our campaigns (+ some snakes) + Ghostly Gallery pins finally packed. He cards his stuff, I card mine, and I do the final checking and packing everything together, including the freebies like the backed-all-5-campaign pins. If I somehow missed something in yours, please let me know at [email protected] as soon as you've received it.
I'm rapidly trying to get everything out; you've all waited waaaay too long to receive these pins, and I also feel a lot of anxiety about these girls and some of the snake preorders still being pending. I have a ready-to-ship campaign that's a sequel, I guess, to the "gacha market" that will go live at the end of this month...but I will try my best to get my current pending orders below 40 across all 3 things (MGR 1, MGR 2, snake preorders) before that goes live. I'll post about it properly this weekend.
Thank you so, so much for your patience, seriously!
I'm so sorry for pausing fulfillment again and being so quiet!! I have been extremely sick. I started having an extremely mild weird sore throat April 7th so stopped packing then, had a dr appt April 9th where he said he didn't see anything, got outrageously sick April 10th, have practically no memories from April 11-16 or so, and am still catching up on sleep because TMJ pain prevents me from keeping my mouth open when I sleep... so for quite a while I wasn't sleeping at all due to severe congestion. High dose antibiotics helped me immensely, but I still get out of breath just from walking around a bit, and I refused to touch literally anything that would ever be leaving the house because it would be repulsive of me to do so when I was so snotty. Also, in retrospect, I was so dissociative from lack of sleep and pain that I likely would have gotten orders incorrect even if I wasn't leaking from my face and decided to pack with gloves on, so it's a good thing that didn't happen. I've been unbearably unproductive in pretty much every area of my life, especially if it's off my phone.
I have no idea what I was sick with but I didn't want to spread it to anyone (between you and me, this sentiment excludes the teenage boy who deliberately violently coughed on me and laughed because I was wearing a mask at costco on April 8th! Ugh!), and it really concerns me that I've lost time like I did. I feel like that isn't normal. But I think I'm on the other end of it now!
That being said, I finally got word yesterday that the remakes should ship to me early this upcoming week. I'm going to hold her to this and bug her every day if they don't ship by Wednesday. And now that I'm no longer a ball of snot, that means I really can start fulfilling again next week also.
I really do apologize, this came out of nowhere!! I am so upset about it...
Just posting to let you all know I still don't have the remakes...
So as a refresher, this is what I'm waiting on still that is needed to fulfill the rest of orders, because they're coming from the same factory.
MGR1:
Fixed Elfling
Fixed Baphomet
Missing qty + remakes of ghoul (they sent me 50 less than what I/we paid for initially)
MGR2:
Green drippy mini bat
(And Cryptic's campaigns are waiting on the cateye effect mini bat and a bunch of spider remakes, namely the dango and lemonade)
Last I was told, they're in printing. That was over a week ago ... and I do nudge her pretty regularly. Meanwhile she keeps posting on instagram every day the pins they're making for their larger clients... 🫠 so sorry everyone. Truly as soon as they show up I will be dropping everything to grade them and get them out.
I've been steadily packing up orders that require those missing pins already, and just leaving everything unsealed but with the name on the package. That way I know each one still needs one or more of the above pins. There's 30+ small boxes of those mostly-filled orders right now. Many also are Cryptic Compendium spider and Chocolat Chaud gallery pin orders combined with the monster girls.
But with this, and the changing weather causing us both to have so much head pain/migraines, the house is really unproductive right now.... ;;;;
I've been putting so much pressure on my manu to have remade these pins, but they're still not done!! 🙃 Honestly I have long since fully lost my mind because of it, I am so sorry. Because I don't want to majorly put this manu on blast, our correspondence showing timeline is censored and attached below as backer-only.
I very strongly emphasized that I NEED at the very least the remakes of Baphomet, Elfling, and the additional 50 Ghoul I paid for that they didn't initially make me, before CNY. Of course, also C's white dango spider and hopefully the lemonade spider too - prioritizing the pins that are currently entirely unfulfillable to attempt to instill some sense of urgency... I can't believe how many months it's been since the campaign ended, I can't apologize enough. This is actually crazy.
I do have 2 updates to share though, they FINALLY at least showed me what Baphomet and Elfling's eyes look like now in order to preserve the glow effect: The eyes have been reversed essentially, the enamel is now glow and what was print before will be inverse. So, the black sclera of Baphy will now be print, iris of Elfling will be print and pupil is enamel. However, she told me for the Elfling pic above that it's the old print colors still but not to panic, so I think...they gouged out the enamel of the samples they held onto, in order to confirm the eyes first? I don't actually know if that's possible, but to save time and money it makes sense to me.
I don't have updates on anything else yet ........
The good news is... that I received Chocolat Chaud's giant package of US orders!!! So I will be able to bundle those with as many remaining as I can.
Japan is not shipping to the US right now except via the very expensive Kuroneko Yamato, which is why this unfortunately had to happen, it was far more cost-effective to send that box to me (and incur a giant duties cost on top of it) than to charge, then spend, an actual fortune sending out each individual small package from her home in Japan. Her health is far more at-risk than mine and I really want to get this done for her, so we really appreciate those of you who have been super patient and understanding. Early Summerween seemed to have a bit of a fulfillment curse, but we are FINALLY all getting everything settled.
Because the current plan is to keep this group event pin-centric and I won't be doing pin-only crowdfunding again, I am unlikely to return to this group project this year. I love everyone involved and I hope despite the hiccups that you'll continue to support those who do participate again 💖🎃 Growing pains (and finding new manufacturers) suck, but these designs were still fun for us all to make, and Cryptic is happy it went so well as his very first online sales venture. 🥹 Though that is still being fulfilled also. Thank you!!!
PS: for some of you, I'm unable to pre-emptively credit you free shipping from the MGR2 survey to combine the two pledges, because I don't know how much your package will weigh once all 3-4 (including Chocolat Chaud's and ALSO possibly Cryptic Compendium's) orders are combined. USPS costs also unfortunately rise every Jan. I WILL give refunds of overages to everyone who was overcharged on shipping, each night that I'm doing batch-printing of labels. Because of Katsucon, most orders containing MGR2 pins are going to take a while still as I unfortunately only was able to send out the survey just this week. I apologize for it being extra convoluted!!
I just got the correct Gorgons in and their quality is...much worse (in terms of flaws like wrong colors in random spots), I'm assuming because the manufacturer is just as over me as I am her, but she should still be completely fulfillable! So since TV Cat is also here, and good, I can fulfill quite a few!
From campaign 2 I also JUST got Dullahan and Mummy and I'm trying to get that one's survey out within a week. I'm a bit later than I planned to be but we've got so much happening right now, I apologize. I'm hoping that for some of them I can actually bundle your pledges if you backed both and are still waiting on Baphomet and/or Elfling. I would just nullify your shipping charge for the 2nd survey.
I put pressure on the manufacturer making the remakes of the girls and told her I need Baphomet and Elfling done this month because they are unfulfillable currently. She said she can prioritize them and I will continue bugging about it because this is ridiculous.
Sorry for the silence!!! I hope everyone who has theirs so far is happy with them!
These were the images I was sent for approval of her print in November, in this order:
These were all sent to me within the span of an hour on the same day.
1: I said the purple looks great but the pink might be a bit strong 2: I said it wasn't good and washed out, could tell something else was wrong but didn't put my finger on it...The most recent proof was approved with this purple here which I should have noticed and is why I apologized before, but as you can see they did actually send me a proper one first. 3: I said this one looks great because the purple is vibrant, and had looked back at the OG sample and decided the pink was actually fine. Note the pink snakes visible.....and apparently the one with the purple ones was the covered up one on the bottom!!
My poor memory didn't remember this in the slightest. I had to look for it just now. She'd already been quoting things at me that I'd said as approval without including the pictures, including this, and I trusted that.
My only excuse for not noticing in the progress pics further along is blurriness and lighting and fatigue. Not great but it is what it is.
So remakes of her have now been approved.
Sorry for the dramatics :( I really thought all hope had been lost. When you're getting things made, always triple check and don't trust your memory even if it's better than mine. This kind of thing happens all the time and is a large part of why I'm quitting!!
Hopefully they'll be done in early Jan barring any other hiccups.
Hi all, (FIRST - I have survey details below in the backer only section!!! Please skip straight to that if you only want to know what's up with that extended timeline.)
I have been negotiating the proof details with my manufacturer ever since paying for them, so it's been a few weeks now. There were issues with some of the details getting lost due to the size and honestly I'm frustrated, because I asked when I was getting them quoted if the size would be an issue with any of the smaller details and she said no. Well, she didn't check. This sort of thing happens constantly so I need to stop being surprised and just adapt. As a result, though, I was really firm about maintaining as much as I possibly could in my original details, because the whole campaign was ran on the impression they'd look like the art!
So here is what had to change:
Elfling's right index finger is now metal "shadows" because those enamel spots were too small to fill, and the loop for her dangle is a bit bigger which personally I don't mind at all.
Spider witch's pupils are now going to be black print because the decreasing size of the eyes means the smallest ones don't have room for enamel fill if the pupils are metal. I absolutely should have anticipated that and that is totally my bad.
For similar reasons, Shinigami's pupils are now going to be printed black Xs but were metal before.
Gorgons' snakes' tongues will be slightly thicker than indicated, and because of the beveling that happens with pins they will look sort of tapered(?) at the sides. I wasn't sure how this would work out but again, I was reassured the initial art was okay after all... Given that the outlines of the pins will also be a bit thicker due to the polishing process they shouldn't look odd.
Here are the approved proof versions of the above (ignore the metal looking grey, it's just to make it easier to distinguish):
Please ignore the colors, manufacturer proofs are notorious for good reason for looking super weird color-wise. The important thing is that all pantones are correct, which they are.
Everything else will turn out as expected! Teeny tiny cut out areas in the artwork shouldn't be expected to go all the way through but they'll still look like holes from the front, however due to the beveling I mentioned there will be very few holes all the way through the backs of pins on the ones with the tiniest cut out details. That is something I knew would be the case from the start as this is my 8th year designing pins, but since I'm mentioning changes I want to point out that this isn't one (with an example).
This pin is super dusty but it's ON the pin not inside the enamel or plating, I didn't notice until zooming in just now; I actually had these pins made through this manufacturer years ago and they came out 90% totally perfect!
As you can see, from the front they do look like cut-outs, and it doesn't detract from the design at all that they aren't visible holes on the back because of it.
Also, the hearts for the Elfling pin have been in production for a couple of weeks! All of the proofs I'm given from them are always gold, please rest assured it WILL be black.
Here is also a comparison example of my 12mm hearts that are similar that already exist, unfortunately I felt they were way too big for the pin which is why I paid a new mold fee to have these done in 8mm instead.
Those smaller hearts without the + are also 8mm, for comparison. These are my syringe earrings.
Now that everything is approved, physical production on the factory floor is finally beginning!
I also want to show what the frosted mascot charms turned out like:
manufacturer sample
They don't have the matte surface texture that I wanted, but the visual effect is still a frosted acrylic appearance and I'm pleased with that. The purple is slightly darker/more saturated than my mockup appears on some screens, I hope the difference is acceptable!
As far as the sequel campaign goes, I've been dealing with some acute health issues that pretty much came out of nowhere so I haven't been able to do a whole lot of cleaning up of the art. Instead, now I just have a lot of different sketches rather than any designs having been fully finished yet:
(kuchisake onna - inspired by techwear and the "straightjacket chic" thing that an alarming number of Reverse: 1999 characters have got going on)
She's like 1/3-1/2 done - I focused on her hair, face, and right hand first as you can tell... Left arm's anatomy needs to be adjusted and then clothing can be finished, which will allow me to finish the rest of the hair as well.
(harpy - inspired by a delinquent/yanki aesthetic and feminine rage in general)
this is my FIRST sketch for her so she's maybe 1/7 done. She will take a LOT more time, probably 6 more hours and will be very big. As you can tell it feels like it's been 20 years since I last drew any kind of braids so that will take me forever, as will her feathers...I want to do them more anatomically correct/detailed than Baphomet's, since I was basing hers off of some of his statues, but we'll see. Because of her size she will be expensive and likely one of the final SGs, to ensure I have plenty buffer by then in case a lot of pledges fall through.
(k/gumiho (either letter is technically correct) - She will also be really big like the harpy...man. I personally like my pins to be pretty petite so I'm going to feel overwhelmed by these designs so we'll see how long it takes me to finish her.)
I'm going to work the fox bead into the design somewhere and give her an outfit that looks kind of cozy. As you can tell, her braids look awful so far too. I ORIGINALLY drew her as a cyclops and HATED it so that's why the hands and chains are fully lined, I redrew everything other than that because I did like the pose and hair I came up with. She will also take probably 4-5 more hours...
Dullahan and Mummy's proofs have also already been approved, and I'm now armed with all of the knowledge from this current back-and-forth that just resolved so I'll be extra careful finalizing these new designs. That should speed things up a bit next time...
Mermaid is finished now except for probably having to change up the flow of her hair/tentacles so those cut-outs are more achievable.
I was going to edit the water shadows but I changed my mind... and since her skin will be glittery "sand" its shadows will be under the glitter pearl effect too and NOT solid print on top of the pin.
I'm still working on the pose for my geode lady (name not final lol...) cross collab design, so I don't have any sketches I like of that done yet. Next non-survey update I will post my progress with the above designs, hopefully my edited Onmyouji, and the fixed Mermaid cut-outs. I will hopefully have 5 finished designs by then (in addition to Dullahan/Mummy) and a working presave page for the next campaign.
Thank you for reading! The backer-only portion is next:
I very, very strongly value honesty and transparency so I'm a little upset with myself for making this decision, but I really want to bring all of them to life: I'm going to try a pt 2 campaign later.
I think that Gorgon (so close!!) and TV Cat are very likely to be unlocked through these surveys, as long as there aren't a ton of failed pledges (I'll know in a few days). My goals do include buffers in case of failed/declined pledges so 🤞.
My goals for the other campaign would include Dullahan, Mummy, Angel, Mermaid, a Harpy, demon Onmyouji (she was actually the first pin I drew but I dropped her because her clothes were stressing me out lol), and I'd like to try to pin the jirai kei Succubus I made for a recent coffin button.
I have about 40 of her so she will be available in limited qty in this survey!
The reason I mention honesty and transparency is because I hate if I've falsely instilled a sense of urgency in anyone, I really did intend for this to be my last pin-centric campaign. 😣 I guess it's not technically a lie since it's more of the same thing...
I won't start building the 2nd one until I have the moths fully shipped out (their last remake batch is being made currently) and once the paws are at least halfway sent out (some have gone out w/moth packages already, remakes of those flawed ones are still in progress). It'll be a short runtime of about 2 weeks also. I'm going to try to get them made before tariffs go back to over 100%...but that might be impossible.
I've been increasingly very ill for most of my life and designing these pins has brought me a joy I haven't experienced creatively in years due to burnout, so I'd really like to get them all made if possible, at least the ones I've already "pinned" (so Harpy and Succubus I don't feel as strongly about, technically both are drawn but need to be reworked entirely in order to become pins).
Thank you for your sincere support of this campaign and the joy these designs have brought me 💗 I hope you might consider supporting part 2 as well!
PS: I expect surveys to go out LATE this month or the first week of July. I will be paying for the funds-raised pins as soon as I receive these initial funds in 2 weeks, but since I'm hoping to fund Gorgon and TV Cat via surveys they, if met, will join production after surveys are charged (I'll give them 2-3 weeks before charging depending on how fast they're filled). Meaning I may get them shipped separately and orders containing them could potentially be relegated to back of fulfillment queue, but that doesn't necessarily mean they won't meet assumed Halloween fulfillment date. However, depending on when I can launch pt 2 I may be able to combine some pledges for later fulfillment if requested.
I've currently got more than 50% of orders out. I posted last month about my health issues, and lately I've been really wondering if what I was "acutely" ill with in April was actually a newish covid variant, considering how WINDED I am all the time now. It's bad. 🫠 I already have POTS, and had mild asthma, but now it's just hard to exist without wheezing. So I'm having to seriously pace myself, and I'm getting a portable EKG I was wearing for 2 weeks taken off in roughly 13 hrs. With this, my hEDS, and my ADHD, I'm also constantly getting injured like a bad slapstick comedy (did you know it's possible to simultaneously jam your toe under and bang your forehead on the edge of an open door while trying to pivot around it?), and every time something like that happens I'm out of commission for a day or 2 so I'm trying to really race against the incidental self-sabotage.
That being said, I'm finally starting to get back to an existable baseline post-Colossalcon, and the remakes have mostly been looked through, so I've been packing things again. As a reminder, most pledges are being bundled with Chocolat Chaud's, Cryptic Compendium's, or both - and shipping costs have skyrocketed so retroactive excess shipping fee refunds for people who paid it multiple times unfortunately won't be very high, if any...
Since a lot of people also backed MGR2 and Geode Pets, and some even asked to bundle my snake preorders with them, some pledges going out are actually up to 6 orders per package and way more than I realized are actually 30+ total pins. You all are amazing, it's crazy and really heartwarming (albeit exhausting in current context) packing for like 4 hours and I'll only have half a dozen orders done, because each one has dozens of combined pins plus Chocolat Chaud's that were already packed. 🤯 Like, I'm really just blown away!! There are a lot of smaller orders too, which my stamina really thanks those backers for, but I'm just so shocked and grateful. I'm very sorry that they piled up like this, but it did give me a new perspective that I wouldn't have necessarily had if I wasn't fulfilling so much at once. I am so, so thankful.
Cryptic Compendium is also really not doing well right now but has been carding things too, and just got done sorting all the remakes and the frogs for Geode Pets. There are no longer any external barriers - "just" time and energy - to getting those orders with all 4 of our campaigns (+ some snakes) + Ghostly Gallery pins finally packed. He cards his stuff, I card mine, and I do the final checking and packing everything together, including the freebies like the backed-all-5-campaign pins. If I somehow missed something in yours, please let me know at [email protected] as soon as you've received it.
I'm rapidly trying to get everything out; you've all waited waaaay too long to receive these pins, and I also feel a lot of anxiety about these girls and some of the snake preorders still being pending. I have a ready-to-ship campaign that's a sequel, I guess, to the "gacha market" that will go live at the end of this month...but I will try my best to get my current pending orders below 40 across all 3 things (MGR 1, MGR 2, snake preorders) before that goes live. I'll post about it properly this weekend.
Thank you so, so much for your patience, seriously!
I'm so sorry for pausing fulfillment again and being so quiet!! I have been extremely sick. I started having an extremely mild weird sore throat April 7th so stopped packing then, had a dr appt April 9th where he said he didn't see anything, got outrageously sick April 10th, have practically no memories from April 11-16 or so, and am still catching up on sleep because TMJ pain prevents me from keeping my mouth open when I sleep... so for quite a while I wasn't sleeping at all due to severe congestion. High dose antibiotics helped me immensely, but I still get out of breath just from walking around a bit, and I refused to touch literally anything that would ever be leaving the house because it would be repulsive of me to do so when I was so snotty. Also, in retrospect, I was so dissociative from lack of sleep and pain that I likely would have gotten orders incorrect even if I wasn't leaking from my face and decided to pack with gloves on, so it's a good thing that didn't happen. I've been unbearably unproductive in pretty much every area of my life, especially if it's off my phone.
I have no idea what I was sick with but I didn't want to spread it to anyone (between you and me, this sentiment excludes the teenage boy who deliberately violently coughed on me and laughed because I was wearing a mask at costco on April 8th! Ugh!), and it really concerns me that I've lost time like I did. I feel like that isn't normal. But I think I'm on the other end of it now!
That being said, I finally got word yesterday that the remakes should ship to me early this upcoming week. I'm going to hold her to this and bug her every day if they don't ship by Wednesday. And now that I'm no longer a ball of snot, that means I really can start fulfilling again next week also.
I really do apologize, this came out of nowhere!! I am so upset about it...
Just posting to let you all know I still don't have the remakes...
So as a refresher, this is what I'm waiting on still that is needed to fulfill the rest of orders, because they're coming from the same factory.
MGR1:
Fixed Elfling
Fixed Baphomet
Missing qty + remakes of ghoul (they sent me 50 less than what I/we paid for initially)
MGR2:
Green drippy mini bat
(And Cryptic's campaigns are waiting on the cateye effect mini bat and a bunch of spider remakes, namely the dango and lemonade)
Last I was told, they're in printing. That was over a week ago ... and I do nudge her pretty regularly. Meanwhile she keeps posting on instagram every day the pins they're making for their larger clients... 🫠 so sorry everyone. Truly as soon as they show up I will be dropping everything to grade them and get them out.
I've been steadily packing up orders that require those missing pins already, and just leaving everything unsealed but with the name on the package. That way I know each one still needs one or more of the above pins. There's 30+ small boxes of those mostly-filled orders right now. Many also are Cryptic Compendium spider and Chocolat Chaud gallery pin orders combined with the monster girls.
But with this, and the changing weather causing us both to have so much head pain/migraines, the house is really unproductive right now.... ;;;;
