Everything is here and my basement is now a warehouse of bird related items. Sorry for the few weeks silence here but things are moving quickly behind the scenes so here is a big update. It's a long road ahead to get everything quality checked, packed, and sent out, but luckily I'm getting some help!

BackerKit was kind enough to send out their very own Sweta to give me a hand and experience the birds first hand! We had an awesome weekend chatting about crowdfunding, taking photos and videos, packing, and just generally eating a lot of good food. It was a huge help and I appreciate it so much. Everyone at Backerkit has gone so above and beyond for me I'm forever grateful to be working with this platform.

I'm also enlisting my parents, boyfriend, and any willing friends in packaging activities. I'm doing the item picking/packing into bags parts so that if any mistakes are made with the order, it's on me. And no one else has to learn my system of 10000 pins lol.

When is my stuff shipping? There is not really a specific order I'm going in, but I'm packing most of the single bag orders first and will tackle orders that need boxes later on. Keep an eye out for tracking info emails. But you might also get the email up to a few weeks before I'm actually able to ship, since I purchase everything in bulk. Sorry for any confusion! I am also confused often!
 
Everything is ahead or on track with my original shipping timeline (Nov-Dec), my goal is to get this done by the end of the year but I may need to take a bit of a shipping hiatus around Christmas since USPS gets pretty crazy around that time. 
 

Locking addresses: I will lock the remaining addresses over the next week or so. If you need to update your address, please do so when you get the email with the 48hr lock warning.

I can ship about 50-100 orders per day, and am about 1/3 of the way done. It will be another 30 USPS business days before I can get everything out regardless of how fast I pack. It takes 3-10min to pack EACH ORDER so if you want to you, you can do the math there and feel very bad for me.  

I'm trying to be more active on my TikTok with packing videos so you can see the process 

Thanks for your patience and support! <3
Rachel / @corviforms

PS. Here's a fun drawing I did of a cedar waxwing feeding its baby aesthetic berries when I took 1 night off from packing bags lol

Thank you all SO MUCH for completing the surveys quickly - we are already more than half way completed.
 
And sorry for the multiple emails in 2 days, but wanted to make sure I clarified things as needed!

All surveys have been sent. If you DID NOT receive an email with your survey, make sure to check your spam folder. You can also access the survey via this link and your email address: https://bird-ita-bags.backerkit.com/

Baby bird pins and a few other bird add-on pins which were missing for the first 1-2 hours of the survey have been correctly placed into the add-ons section!

Surveys will be open until July 28th. This means that you may make edits to your items up until that date. On that day you will get a "Lock Survey" 48hr warning email for any final edits you'd like to make.

Once surveys are locked on July 30th I will send out a notification that I am charging cards for shipping and add-ons. Again, it will email you a 48hr warning in case you need to make any updates. That means that cards will be charged on August 1st.

Your shipping address will not be locked until I am ready to begin shipping. For pin-only orders I expect this to be August/September. For any orders containing bags and wallets, production and shipping is a lengthy process but I am still on target for the Oct-Jan timeline and will lock addresses when ready to ship. I will keep you all updated on the manufacturing/shipping process. 

Each bag comes with it's matching strap and insert. Any Extra straps and inserts can be added in the add-ons section. Check images for strap and insert colors. The strap/insert for a bag cannot be swapped out, please purchase extra straps/inserts if you would like other colors! I kept them as cheap as possible so that people can get multiple.

(Everything is accurate in images except for the duck, which will have a "more accurate" grey insert. If you want the duck and prefer the original green insert I can handle this on a case by case basis since this was last minute change.)


Hope that helps clear up some of the questions, I will continue to edit this update with more FAQ if there are any more common questions. 

Have a good one!
Rachel / Corviforms

Hey everyone,

I hope you are having a great holiday season! I'm still on track to have everything complete by the end of January and am down to the final few packages.

Sorry to those of you who got shipping notifications in November and haven't seen package movement yet - most of my December I was unable to pack as I was away to visit family on the other side of the country for a week, and then got knocked out by sinus surgery for a week. But I'm healthy (and can smell!) and back at packing now. Yesterday my dad helped me out and we managed to pack nearly 100 boxes, so my house currently looks like a hoarder situation until I can get USPS to pick them all up lol.
 

I'm taking as much care as I can in packaging but of course still make mistakes. If there is anything wrong with your order, please contact me via email at [email protected]

Thanks again and have an awesome New Year!
Rachel / Corviforms

Hello everyone!

Here is my check-in to let you know I'm still working on it! Been continuing to work hard packaging, sending out 50-100 packages per business day. We are now at 73% completed!

If your order has a tracking number but no tracking info yet it just means I haven't sent it! I have boxes of packages ready to go over the next couple weeks. I really appreciate your patience. I'll get the rest out as quickly as I can without making mistakes!

Since I'm packing things as quickly as I can I'm tending to make a few more mistakes than I'd like, but I'm correcting them as soon as possible. Typically a missed pin here or there - or my horrible habit of forgetting to check the item count next to the item name.
Maybe a dozen or two of these out of nearly 2000 packages isn't so bad though!

Keep sharing photos of your bags, seeing them on twitter, instagram, tumblr, etc makes my day! I try to re-share as many as possible :)

Thanks!
Rachel

PS. I'm currently doing a fundraiser for the Audubon Society - if you're interested in donating to help birds you can do so through my campaign here - https://birdsneedus.audubon.org/p2p/276109/corviforms

Donate $10 or more and I will send you a sticker, $25 or more gets you a sticker and a wood pin! Just fill out the quick form here (you know i love google forms by now) - https://forms.gle/yPcuLPzL2R8mrL1g7

PSS. If you are one of the 50 people who have not answered the survey yet i am staring at you sternly and wagging my finger disapprovingly 

Hello bird friends,

We are currently in what I like to call "the boring part of the project", but I wanted to make sure I stay in touch and keep you as updated as I am! A bunch of manufacturer photos are added to the end of this update :)

Shipping to me has begun on half the bags and the egg wallets and manufacturing is in progress for the rest. Sea freight takes about 30 days, unloading at the port and transportation to the local storage facility takes a couple weeks, and then UPS pickup and ground transportation across the country to me is another 2 or so weeks. So I estimate at least 60 days between leaving their origin and arriving at my house. The good news here is that the first shipments left the origin port in late August, meaning they should get to me by late October/early November which is right on track for my schedule. Just so you know, if you're ever curious about the status you can check the main page which I am keeping updated as things progress.   

I have already shipped out the initial ~250 orders of just pins & crow bags! So 10% completed on a 2500 backer project feels pretty good to have done ahead of time.

If you have any problems with your order, please contact me via email at [email protected] and I will fix it as soon as I am able. Twitter/Instagram/FB messages are NOT encouraged as I check them infrequently.

Thanks for waiting with me!
Rachel / Corviforms

Hey everyone!

Quick reminder that cards are charging today for shipping & add-ons if you have completed the survey. If there is any issue with payment processing, you will get an email from Backerkit to update your info. 

If you have any questions specific to your order please reach out to me directly at [email protected] and include the email you used in Backerkit so that I can identify your order. Comments here are fine for general questions, I'll try to answer everything as soon as I can. If you want to check on your order info, or need to access your survey you can do so here: https://bird-ita-bags.backerkit.com/ I'm still waiting on about 150 people to complete the survey, you can also access it through that link. 
 

I'm nearly ready to ship out orders that have ONLY: pins, stickers, washi tape, and the crow, chick, and dove ita bags from my previous project. This accounts for about 10% of orders. I will lock addresses for these orders ONLY over the next week or so. All other addresses will remain unlocked for editing until I am closer to shipping. I had already ordered a restock of crow bags prior to this project so they are now here. Everything else is still on schedule for the timeline I have posted on the main page. 

Thanks for reading and have a nice Monday :)
Rachel / Corviforms

Hey Everyone,

Chickadee & Quail samples have arrived! They look and feel great, I'm really happy with how these two turned out. If the images sway you one way or the other, you are still able to make changes to your survey and add-ons until the end of July when I will lock orders.

I took a bunch of photos, so if you want to see more of these two bags you can check them out here - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1mhpyZ1SLSlj8PtQr7gcDBceV3333zrjG?usp=sharing

Also, I'd like to offer fanny pack/waist bag straps to go with your bags if you're interested! They are adjustable from about 38 to 61 inches including the connecting clip hardware and the bag.  They are 1.5 inches wide and made of a sturdy nylon material - kind of feel like a softer version of a seatbelt. So, now you can edit your survey add-ons to add these straps for $6 each if you'd like them!

Speaking of Surveys...
Thank you to the 90% of backers who have completed the survey! If you're one of the 200+ people who have not yet completed the survey, please make sure that you do that by the end of the month when I will be locking surveys to get final item counts. If you DID NOT receive an email with your survey, make sure to check your spam folder. You can also access the survey via this link and your email address: https://bird-ita-bags.backerkit.com/

Charging Cards
Your cards have already been charged for your pledge amount, but will be charged for shipping and any add-ons you've chosen on August 1st. There will be an email notification 2 days prior to cards charging in case you need to update any information/payment methods.

Pin Manufacturing
Pins are well underway and many are already completed! They should get to me in about 2 weeks. Any orders that contain ONLY pins, stickers, and keychains (nothing coming from the bag manufacturer) should be ready to ship out by the end of August!

Bag Manufacturing
All bags except for the Quail & Chickadee (which I needed to check samples for first) are paid for and scheduled for manufacturing. I will order the last 2 designs in about a week. I've asked my manufacturer to send me progress photos so that I can keep you all updated. Will be sharing those as we wait 2-4 months for things to be completed and shipped to me. I've staggered ordering so I can handle the amounts (and, honestly, to hedge my bets with cargo shipping). You can check on the main page under the top "Current Status" section to see what was ordered when and all my status nonsense.

So, things are chugging along :)
Talk to ya later!
- Rachel 

I will be sending the surveys today for you to make your choices, pay for shipping, and add on any additional items you might want!

First, I will be sending out the "smoke test" this morning (9AM EST) which is a test run sending the survey to a random 5% of backers. I will be on standby if there are any issues that need to be fixed!

Once the survey proves functional from the test, it will go out to ALL backers! As long as there are no major issues, I expect to send the survey to everyone later on today (Tues, Jul 5th).

Please complete the survey as soon as you are able! This way I can get final numbers and have production underway for everyone.

Moving? No problem! I will not lock addresses until I am ready to ship. This means you will be able to edit your address for some time. You will get a warning before addresses are locked. 

Here is a link to ALL my bag photos on google drive in case you want to take a closer look at each design and see them from multiple angles: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1afrols0V9ShP37R1A8iTNUy8Ezg3ICtl?usp=sharing

The only difference from these photos is that the Duck bag will have a GREY wing as the green wing was a manufacturing error - green was intended for the inside of the bag only. The green wing color pictured will also be available as add-on if you prefer. 

Production for the Quail and Chickadee samples is still underway, I will share pictures as soon as I get them.
All pins and 4 bag designs are now in mass production, and I will get the Egg wallets and more bag designs started in the next couple days when I get some surveys finalized. 

- Rachel / Corviforms

I was hoping to have surveys out to you early this week but it will be few more days to make sure they are running smoothly. Unfortunately, I was not on vacation last week and was instead extremely sick and unable to do much at all :( No big delays though, I'm almost fully recovered and enjoying the time sitting at my desk getting everything ready. I'll start sending the first surveys in the next week or so.

There is still about $7000 in errored pledges - if you had an issue with your payment method please fix it when you get a chance. I can't count my chickens before they're... uh... paid...

I've finalized designs for the Blue Jay, Chickadee, and Quail enamel pins:

I've also finished some Baby Bird minipin designs that will be available as add-ons :)

- Chickadee & Quail samples have been ordered, it will be a few weeks until I have product photos
- Bulk Order has been officially placed for the first subset of bags! This includes Crow, Chicken, Cockatiel, Zebra Finch, and Flamingo.
(I am staggering orders by a week or two each to keep things manageable and lower risk involved with shipping overseas)
- Egg wallet order and initial pin order will be placed within the next couple weeks
- Remaining bags will be ordered over the next month

Any questions? I'll try to answer!

Thanks,
Rachel / Corviforms

PS. I will be dealing at Anthrocon (Dealers Den table L15) this upcoming weekend! 

Just wanted to give you a quick update on the status of everything. Nothing major at the moment, just chugging along! Working hard to finalize pin art and get the BackerKit Survey set up. I plan to get the survey out to you all in about a week. Reminder - during the survey you can add on any additional items, provide your address, and will pay for shipping based on item weight. Check the Shipping section on the main page for cost estimates. Planning to move soon? No problem -you will be able to edit your address right up until I begin shipping!

I now have the egg wallet samples! They feel great and I'm really happy with them. Each is yellow inside with a little zipper compartment for change and 3 card slots. They all have gold zipper, keychain ring, and a classy looking logo on the back :) They fit perfectly inside the bags, I think you're really going to enjoy them.

Thanks to your help I have enough feedback to start getting items in production!
More than 50% of backers filled out the google form I set up, so now I can double these numbers and round up to get a good idea of each design count. Thought you might also be interested in seeing which are most popular.

I will be ordering 3-4 designs at a time so that I can spread out shipping and keep things manageable.
For anything more than this first order, I need to wait for the BackerKit funds to hit my account, which can take a couple weeks.

Finished up some pigeon art that will be used for acrylic keychains and stickers! However, I still have several pins to finish designing (blue jay, chickadee, quail) so I will probably NOT end up with keychain/sticker designs for each bird by the time I need to send out the survey. I'll try to get some stuff done soon but my priority is getting the pins finalized and getting these things into production.

Also there are a ton of cute critters in my yard right now, so just in case you don't see me posting these on my Twitter I made a fun little collage of my photos, cause I'm pretty sure you all like birds, right? RIGHT???

Any responses over the next few days will be slow cause I'm going to the beach :)

Talk to ya later,
Rachel / Corviforms

Hey everyone,

Thank you SO MUCH for supporting this project! I am awestruck by the numbers we were able to reach.

Please read through this update and check the campaign page if you have any questions! It can be difficult to respond to everyone individually. 

If there is an issue with your card, Backerkit will notify you to fix it. 

This takes time to set up properly and I want to make sure everything runs smoothly when I hit send. Shipping will be based on weight of the packages, and will be at or below the estimated values listed on the campaign page- if you're not sure about shipping costs please check there. I will be waiting a few days for payments to come through and I am also still in the process of finalizing some designs so I can offer you all as many fun different add-ons as possible.

I will get manufacturing going on some items this week, once I get a little feedback from you (see below). I need to wait for the funds to come into my account to be able to start the majority of the manufacturing!
Pins take 6-8 weeks, wallets and bags will take 3-4 months. Here is a reminder of my projected timeline:

If I can get at least half of the backers to fill out this form, I can get manufacturing going on several items now. I will be doing my manufacturing in waves so that I can better handle each shipment when it arrives.

Other Stuff:
- Egg wallet samples are scheduled to arrive at my house today or tomorrow, so I'll be sharing photos of those soon
- Additional Pin and Sticker/Keychain designs will be shared as soon as I finish them
- A Preorder Store will open for those who missed the campaign in the next week or so

Thank you, thank you!
I will do my best to provide updates here at every step of the way. but you can follow along at @Corviforms on Twitter for more frequent updates. 

Rachel / @Corviforms

Really excited to add these two wild birds to the mix. I'll be sending designs for samples today and will hopefully have some sample photos ready by the time I send surveys so that you can see the physical item before deciding on your bag(s).

The other designs- and many more suggestions- will just need to wait until I have time to tackle another campaign. Just a reminder that I have to order a minimum of 300 of each design from my manufacturer so it's a huge deal to add more! And also I am just one person and these are going to be stored in my basement lol.

I've been seeing a lot of questions about what to do if you want an Egg Wallet but it's not part of your pledge tier - do not worry about it for now! You will be able to add on wallets at the end of the campaign when you choose your items, provide your address, pay for shipping, and add on any additional items. They will be the same price as they are in the pledge tiers. I didn't want to overcomplicate the process by having too many pledge levels!

Project ends in LESS THAN FOUR DAYS, so if you know anyone else who would be interested in any of this stuff, please share!

Twitter - Instagram - Facebook - Tumblr

Thanks for all your support :)

- Rachel / @Corviforms

PS. Any questions? feel free to comment here or reach out on one of my socials. I'm also easy to reach via Telegram

Narrowing it down to the top 6 from all the birds in the world was hard enough, so I need your input again: which 2 of the 6 that I've designed do you want to see become reality?

 

I also wanted to mention that me and Jason Furie of Pizza Pinz have done some pizza-pigeon collaboration and created two awesome new pins that you can get for free. Back Bird Ita Bags  and Pizza Pinz and you'll get one pigeon pizza party pin from each of us!

Egg wallet samples are completed for 4/5 colors! All colors are unlocked and are available in either your pledge tier or as an add-on. They are $25 each whether they are part of a pledge or added on later during the survey.
I also now have an even better video of how they will work here on my twitter featuring the quail egg.

Once again I am asking you, please continue to share this project on social media -shares, retweets, and posts about this project are vital! Know birders? People who just love eggs? Reddit subs that might be interested? Anything that you can do helps and I appreciate it.

Twitter - Instagram - Facebook - Tumblr

- Rachel / @Corviforms

PS. Any questions? feel free to comment here or reach out on one of my socials. I'm also easy to reach via Telegram and I've just created a new Telegram channel for updates and streaming- https://t.me/corviform