Hello everyone! This is Midnight Springs writing this update because I'm primary contact with the manufacturer.
It's been quiet here so I just wanted to shed some light on the mess that has been happening behind the scenes. For backers only, please refer below the cut for correspondence with the manu that explains pretty much everything, and pay close attention to the dates...
Hey sorry for being so quiet this was in my drafts and I thought I published it!! 20 orders have been packed and sent off to the post office!! In fact most have probably arrived already! 10 were backers of both me and Midnight Springs. All are going to say Midnight Springs for return address because we're sharing the pirateship account.
A couple with single random pins or pink lemonade itself were actually packed because there were 4 pink lemonades that look good, but the rest are being remade. There are other orders still being packed and I have all the moths now so I just sent out an email to people who got the blue moth to see which version purple enamel they like better
I'll update again next week because I'm going to be packing everything else that can be sent out, remakes of things are moving super slowly so there are still a lot that can't be sent yet.
Orders are being sent out and the moth situation was fixed, they're going to remake some of them but not all of them so people can get the one they want. When I have pics to compare the two I'll email. Here's an update of a finished one with the current pink
Also, the bat coins are done and are being sent out to people by Holly, so from me you'll just be getting the boba if you qualify but not the coin
This is taking some time since I'm trying to get diagnosis for some health issues right now while still working
ALSO those who backed Geode Pets, they're arriving this month actually so I should be able to ship your orders together and will post about that on that campaign tomorrow!
Hey everyone, need to know if you think this is ok or not.
First, ignore the epoxy spillage at the bottom wings they said this was a sample they held onto because the quality had issues and that's why it wasn't with the rest in production.
They said that "silver" enamel was put behind the pink translucent enamel. That was done without asking. Because of it, the blue metal can't be seen through the pink at all, so it's very neon still but not purply like it was supposed to be. But do you think this looks okay?
this isn't the best example because the lighting isn't great and this was a video but backerkit doesn't let us embed videos so I tried to screenshot
I made a quick poll and if it isn't unanimously okay I'll ask them to remake that. They did say that if it's not okay that they'll redo it since they didn't ask first, it's just all been so long that I want to get you guys the rest of the pins asap. Crazy because the green moth is going just fine, only this blue one is having all these issues
bottom printing is done so they're about 2/3 done
this kinda shows it better, the pink looks basically opaque now which kinda eliminates the point of it being translucent?
Hi everyone! As you can see, the moths have now been plated so they probably will take only 2 more weeks at most. This factory is much faster. But, you can probably see there was a huge miscommunication for some reason and they made 2 different molds.They should still both resemble the artwork because the blue one was supposed to just have the metal's blue visible up top anyway
This week I'll begin packing. The orders that can currently go out are anything excluding: dangos or chance at dangos, lemonades, moths, Early Summerween bat coin (those are almost done too)
So those will start going out this month and once that wave is out then the stuff to be able to fulfill the others should start coming in and we can keep going Also we got the stickers in 5 of the designs had issues (3 dangos, bonbon and Carmel apple) so will need to be remade but the rest are good Thanks!
Hey, so unfortunately I've got a couple serious issues delaying being able to get your packages out.
The first is that a few pins have quality issues in most or all, mostly the "white" dango which was supposed to be a warm off-white with white print instead being...grey
I requested they remake them because it just looks...bad, and it also means the pic they sent me a while ago that I approved of the metal colors was edited or just in really inaccurate lighting. Because it was absolutely not grey in that pic:
Not as warm as we wanted but not the tone it came out as either. She also lied about the rest of the pins being fine because there really are a lot of green and pink with random splotches in the eyes...
The other designs most affected are pink lemonade and the bonbon, the first has a ton of metal issues all on the eye boba, and the bonbon's problem is the print is incomplete and not lined up right
Because of this I can't do dango orders or blind bag orders over 3+ right now but about half each of the lemonades and bonbons are okay so some of those with no issues can go out.
The non-pin-related issue is because of the govt shutdown. I'm putting that in backer only info.
Geode pets ends tomorrow and currently available to pledge for are catfish, lizard, and snake! Please share the campaign on social media if you know anyone who'd be interested it really does help alot.
Reminder that surveys are locking on October 10th end of day! There's still 8 who haven't filled them out. After I do that then I'll make sure everyone's being charged the correct shipping (so for people who also backed Midnight Springs, that's none) and have the qualifying moths attached. Then you'll all be charged October 13th. 3PM EST
Also, Midnight Springs' surveys finally went out so if you did back her too make sure you fill it out!
I received an email a few days ago (technically only yesterday because it was hanging out in my spam for a couple days apparently sorry about that) about having the 10 pins to qualify, and I realized pretty late that I didn't have a way to pledge for all 10 uniquely that makes sure there won't be any duplicates. The 10 random spiders tier doesn't guarantee you'd get all unique ones because I really will be picking them at random. So I made a pledge tier that's $140 so it's still discounted based on the individual choice pricing and includes all the unlocked spiders except taro boba! So if you get that you'll still qualify for both moths for free too (I'm adding those to orders after locking them). I enabled it as a possibility to switch to, so if you go in the survey you can switch to it this way:
It will save you about $20 off of the price per pin that's included in the set of 6 option (which is about $15/each) -
NEXT CAMPAIGNS (October 14th!!)
China is on a long holiday right now so I don't have any updates about the pins themselves (they're not here yet), but I do have a teaser page up for my campaign that will cross-collab with Midnight Springs!
this is super temporary I'm still cleaning up other designs
All of my pins for this collection will be really glittery with transparent enamel on top, like these close ups of her gorgon and cat paws show:
So the print is under the glitter and won't cover the glitter at all.
I'm rushing to finish at least 4 designs (2-3 other animals + cross-collab) because I do really want to get these made but work has been kicking my butt. So right now it's not the final designs on the banner, but that will be fixed before launch and I have quotes already too based on the features and everything. Please follow along on my teaser page if interested, I didn't realize I have to have enough follows on there for them to believe it'll get funded before I can even submit for review, so I'm on a time crunch for that too...ouch.
I'm still finalizing my freebie cross-collab pin but hers is Golem:
Also, now that I'll have return backers for the first time I'll have a return backer freebie!!
This is Midnight Springs' bat mold but what you might not know is that in 2021 with her ita bag campaign she did a lot of collab designs with people on her mini bats (something like over 30 colorways of that mold have been made because of this). My colorway actually outsold everyone else's! So this is the same print design but this time with cat eye enamel!
It will have the same effect as cat eye nailpolish (magnetic and shimmery) which is why it's mocked up like that.
Might be able to get an early bird sticker design made too.
Sorry this feels so fast and sudden. Definitely were trying to get our campaigns ready sooner. life really happened
You'll notice all the pictures are of the finished pins except for the dango and the moths. That's because they are actually all approved already:
Most of them are finished fully, some are still in production. The pictures aren't the best, but you can finally sort of see the detail for the bonbon and what was intended for the bobas. But lemonade really is much bigger now because they needed the extra space between the eyes.
If I made any mistakes with the survey please tell me!
Since there are 8 available spiders, the "set of 6" options don't automatically include any specific ones, you'll have to choose and there is the option to do that. If you choose any of the dango spiders as 1/6, you need to choose the other two also because I'm not separating the sets
I did pay half of the balance of the dango in advance because the survey was taking so long to get out, so they are mostly done. The white one is fully approved with print now actually, where it's dyed off-white and printed white but the green and pink ones they reversed the dye color with the print color...making the highlights shadows. Sooo they're redoing that for the 2nd time because they just keep printing darker and darker...
The moth is the only other pin not yet in progress because having to remake the mold was an unexpected expense (had the old mold ship to current manu and it doesn't work with their machinery which is I guess different from the previous one) and doubles the cost of the pin. Then on top of that, we're now having a ton of issues with this manufacturer so since I didn't pay for that yet and the mold has now been trashed already I'm getting them made with someone else. And they're even more expensive unfortunately. So the neon moth, and the green sour gummy that's free to anyone who has 10 or more pins by the end of the survey collection, will be late because they're made with survey funds (which are also paying for the 2nd half of dango cost, and packaging supplies)
The dango's stars were finished already and we have them, that was mentioned in the last update, but we didn't get chains yet. That'll be done after the pins arrive to make sure they fit the posts. The dango will also be coming with gold locking back clasps and not rubber ones just in case anyone wants to convert to keychains or something
Backers who backed both me and Midnight Springs were given a credit to their survey that is $6 and will fully nullify your shipping cost if you're in the US, so you'll only be charged shipping with hers. If you're in another country, please fill out the survey anyway and I can adjust the credit applied before charging you!
Survey deadline is October 10th end of day, please fill out by then and make sure your card info is correct! I'll be charging 3 days later at 3PM EST (October 13th). This is to get you your stuff ASAP, I can't stop you from taking longer but it's not going to get you in the first wave of packages
Because of the extended timeline from unexpected issues, anyone who qualifies for moths or ordered from both me and Midnight Springs probably won't get them in time for Halloween. Only a few of her pins have been approved, they've been giving her a lot of trouble with her proofs and printing things really wrong mostly, so they won't be ready as soon as mine were/are. They're shipping the finished spiders to me first without charging extra shipping thankfully
The manufacturer's quality has gone downhill this year unfortunately. So the pins are all limited to 10 claims each (this doesn't count for what was already claimed during the campaign runtime, you're fine), because I'm worried about the standard grade count
Because of these manu issues and burnout from work it's unlikely that I'll be able to finish my designs in order to cross-collab with the 2nd monster girl riot, but I'm still working on them on and off. I do have a lot of ideas but juggling fulltime work and this is hard even though I'd prefer to do this instead.
Thank you for your patience!! Please ask questions about specific orders via email but if it is general and you think it would benefit others to see, you can ask in the comments because I'll keep checking this post daily for about a week to make sure I don't miss anything. Thanks
Hey everyone, I realized it is actually better logistically for me to apply that credit for backers of Midnight Springs on the lock date (October 10th) instead of right now, one reason being that otherwise it will complicate international pledges too much.
So please do continue to fill out the survey even if it says your order total includes shipping, because through me it won't be charged. Only through her. You won't be charged when submitting my survey, only on Oct 13th after it's been locked already and the credits were added.
You're already in a segment:
this 68 includes failed/canceled pledges and errored cards so it's a few less
And that means that you're all already sorted, so please don't worry about being missed. Unless there's a backend error, it won't be possible to miss your pledge when applying the credit
For anyone who didn't also back her, you will be charged shipping through me as normal
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