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.
