I've been sharing quick, as-it-happens status updates over on my Discord - I heartily recommend joining up for the fastest information on all of my art, merch, and campaigns, if you enjoy that sort of shindig - but have had my nose rather smushed to the grindstone. That is to say, pin grading and carding went smoothly, shipping is nearing completion, and it's high time for a formal campaign update!
A cat army, otherwise known as a carmy
Grading and carding thousands of pins is always a massive undertaking, but we busted through it in record time. Both Abend (Cat Skull) and Decomm (Void Cat) had B-Grade rates sitting fractionally just above and below my maximum threshold of 30%, but I have plenty for fulfillment and everyone else stayed firmly in my desired range of the 20s and below.
They're smiling at you~
An occasional downgrading flaw on Abend was black teeth/teeth missing fill, which is thematically fun to be honest, so that sort of thing certainly helps keep my spirits up as I'm squinting at these guys. Life willing, I'll aim to make the leftover Spooky Circuit pins, including B-Grades, available for purchase sometime in June - so if you missed out, stay tuned. :]
Magenta, Gold, and Purple-Blue pupils on iCandy
The bulk batches of rainbow anodized Void pins also yielded a stunning spectrum of plating variation, which is exactly what I'd hoped. Many of your new bot-board friends will be a little bit unique in one way or another, and I hope they delight you too!
My meta and I brainstormed a story for CMD (Hare) recently, and I'm excited to share it with you in the future!
The Spooky selective holographic stickers also arrived safe and sound during the carding process and they look fantastic!
IKEA SAMLA totes, my beloved fulfillment partner
For those seeking status numbers: out of 252 confirmed orders, ALL of them are packed and 133 have been fully processed and dropped off at my local postal point. The remaining packages are being double checked, stickered, sealed, and registered with InTime Delivery.
Behold the Boxpocalypse of my living room
MAJOR shout out to Appeltjesgroen for being a MVF (Most Valuable Frog) and alerting me to the fact that InTime now offers Global Shipping via PostNL! For the first 20 orders or so I was using PostNL Zakelijk's website directly, which is so painfully buggy and slow - being able to resume using InTime for everyone, including US customers, has sped up the process considerably. Appel's art is adorable and you should check it out, especially if you're an amphibian enjoyer!!
Additional action shot feat. my wife playing Two Point Campus in the background
To be super candid about the chaos of it all, I have no office and currently do have to royally fuck up our living room to handle these campaigns, as we have under 60 meters square living space split amongst three adults. HOWEVER we did just get approved for a mortgage on the house we're hoping to buy - so a real work space should be in my future, which will help immensely going forward!! My business income looking more impressive due to these campaigns absolutely contributed to that, so THANK YOU all again for enabling me to design and realize these lil guys for you! It's literally life changing and I appreciate it more than I can adequately describe. <3
Stickered Baggies
A note on your shipments: the first handful I packed used up the shiny drawstring bags from the first campaign, and after that I switched to new, recycled paper baggies. This change is in an attempt to proceed with increased sustainability in mind!
All the foam, bubble wrap, paper, and other filler you may encounter padding your orders is reused material on its second and third life as well, and while a portion of the baggies per order have been sealed with stickers I created using my little thermal printer, the rest are fastened with portions of B-Grade sticker sheets and other fun odds and ends we had on hand. The paper bags do also feature a wax coating so, if peeled carefully, any stickers used to seal your pins should be salvageable to enjoy as well.
The thin foam in particular comes with the bulk pin orders!
As always I'm delighted by the response to these lil robots and their corresponding PCB boards, and it's been really cool seeing the orders mixed between Spooky Circuit and OG Short Circuit offerings!
Abend was based on a domestic cat skull, but sized to believably fit inside of RAID (Tiger)!
I did disclaim in the title that this update would include a healthy spread of gratuitous pin pics. I should wrap this up and get back to it! Currently we're on track to have all Spooky Circuit orders in the mail by this upcoming Tuesday the 12th, after which I'll be focused on preparing my table for Confuzzled. If you'll be attending, definitely pop by and say hello!
I've also been hard at work planning my next few campaigns. The current teasers up for each are bare bones, but more will be revealed as their corresponding projects approach~
If you're craving more Circuit pins, I will once again be haunting Pintober with Spectral Circuit. For robot fans who also enjoy a certain machine-heavy video game series, I've been invited to participate in TRIBUTES with Gears of GAIA. Then furthest out, but certainly not least, I plan to participate in Pin of Pride 2027 with Proud Noodles.
I'll certainly holler about them in the future, but for now please do "count yourself in" on any of the above that interest you. c;
<3
Happy May all and thank you so much for being here!
