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!
