I got word that the pins are FINALLY done, packed up, and on their way to me!
Here are some more pictures of finished pins:
Crescent Moon - Original
Crescent Moon - Dark Version
The Sun
The Moon
The Night Sky - sorry the picture is so low quality D:
And the filler pins too:
Not sure why they didn't send a picture of the white Trio filler. Probably just forgot, but oh well. Everything else is there!
Shipping Timeline
I do have one piece of sort of bummer news. Because of how expensive shipping has gotten with tariffs etc., I chose to opt for a less expensive shipping option from my manufacturer. It literally went from like $2000+ extra in shipping costs alone, down to $500. Unfortunately, this does mean that it will take a bit longer to get the pins than usual - about 18-22 days instead of the typical 1 week or less. Because of this, I won't be receiving the pins until late September, which means I won't be able to start shipping until sometime in October at the earliest.
I know that's a huge deviation from the original timeline, but...it is what it is. 😫 I really appreciate how patient and understanding you guys have been with this project. It wasn't supposed to take all year, but alas.
Charging Cards for Shipping + Add-ons
Once I have the pins in-hand, I'll be able to weigh them, update shipping costs, and finally charge cards in the pledge manager.
I estimate that I'll be charging cards around the end of September or early October. I'll post another update when I'm ready to charge cards to give you a heads up. Please make sure your payment method is up-to-date and that the funds are available around this time to avoid delays in receiving your rewards. If your payment fails at the shipping charge stage, you won't get your reward until you fix your payment.
That's all for this update. Thanks for reading and I'll catch you in the next update!
First off, a fun question: Did any of you get to watch the Perseid meteor shower this week?? My friends and I went out on Wednesday night to go try to see some of it, and we saw a handful of really good ones, but between storms blowing clouds into the region and some light pollution, we didn't get to see as many as we'd hoped. Maybe next year!!
Anyway, onto the update!
Finally, after months of waiting, I'm starting to see some completed pictures of the pins coming in from my manufacturer! These pictures are getting me SO excited, and I wanted to share them with you all as well!
FYI - The manufacturer used the wrong size of cards for most of these (they used 4.5" cards for all of them instead of 3.5"...oops!) so they look a lot smaller than they actually are. Don't worry, they're the promised size listed on the campaign page!
Original colorways:
Black Hole
Ordinary Star
Supernova
Comet
Neutron Star
Dark Matter
Stellar Nebula
Alternate colorways:
Blood Moon
The Sun
Sirius (cross collab pin)
Black Hole
Stellar Nebula
Ordinary Star
Supernova
Neutron Star
Dark Matter
Comet
Still waiting on pictures of:
The Night Sky (both versions)
Crescent Moon (both versions)
The Moon (original colorway)
The Sun (original colorway)
Filler pins
Early Bird pins (both colorways)
But so far these pins are looking really pretty and I'm so excited to see them in real life, and I hope these pictures get you guys excited too!!
I'll post another update if/when I get more pictures from the manufacturer. :) Until then!
SUPER relieving and exciting news for you today! My manufacturer has finally produced a sample for The Night Sky that I'm happy with and I have approved it, and I wanted to show you all.
It took much longer than I anticipated, but I am quite happy with the result. The pin in action is STUNNING - the shimmer is so pretty, exactly what I was hoping for with this pin.
With that, I'm going to do another 2-day warning to re-lock the surveys. If you want to add this pin to your order or any others, this is your final chance!
Thank you so much for all your patience while I've struggled with this, it's very greatly appreciated!
It's been a while, and I really wish I had better news for you. I was putting off making an update because I was waiting until I had finalized all the samples for the pins, thinking, surely it can't take much longer to finalize them? Unfortunately I was wrong. 😓
So let's get into it. First, the good stuff.
I've approved the samples for the Crescent Moon and Stellar Nebula pins, which is a big step at least. Here are the finalized half-complete samples for those two:
The crescent moon looks a bit odd as a still image, but I can attest that the opal effect looks really cool in motion. I'm sadly unable to upload videos to my updates, otherwise I would show you guys T.T
I've also approved samples for Neutron Star and Supernova:
The Night Sky Pin is being problematic. We've done multiple samples with different styles of effects at this point and somehow my manufacturer just isn't getting the effect I want even after sending them multiple example photos & videos. They even showed me samples of pins THEY MADE that had the effect I want, but on my pin, it's just not looking right.
I'm going to keep working on sampling it with them, because I KNOW my manufacturer is capable of it, so this one's just going to take a little longer.
So far, this is the closest sample they've gotten so you can get at least get an idea:
This just doesn't have quite the level of glimmer I was looking for based on the samples they sent me (which were super shimmery and GORGEOUS) and I'm not sure why they're having so much trouble replicating it on my pin :/ I'm going to keep trying. But if they can't get it right after the next few samples, I think I'll just tell them to go with the sample above.
In short, I'm getting really frustrated with the production on these. My original timeline put me shipping out orders to you guys this month, and the fact that they haven't even finished sampling them is driving me INSANE. I've NEVER had this much trouble with the sampling process before, nor have they been this slow about it. It has sometimes taken them a week or longer to make ONE new sample of a pin, so when it takes that long and is STILL wrong, the delays keep racking up.
I'm not the only pin creator that has experienced these delays - it's apparently an industry-wide issue as of late, so unfortunately, even if I wanted to switch manufacturers, most likely it wouldn't help or make things go any quicker. :/
I'm truly sorry for all the delays, but I promise you all that you WILL get your pins eventually. It's just taking so much longer than it should ðŸ˜
I'm back with more pin sample photos! Though I will preface with this: these pins aren't quite right at the moment, and you'll probably agree, so please know before diving in that I am already working with my manufacturer to fix these.
With that, here are the samples for the Crescent Moon and Night Sky:
The night sky especially needs a lot of work. The skin color looks all wrong - it's supposed to be a dark indigo/purpleish blue, same with the crescent moon's skin as well. My manufacturer is working on getting more suitable glitter colors in stock to make these look more like my artwork.
In addition, the opal flakes also aren't really what I was envisioning and I'm hoping they can tweak it to look closer to what I had imagined.
These two suffer from the same issue as the other alternate colorways with the very obnoxious multicolored glitter. I'm getting more samples made with different glitter so these are more subtle, and as soon as I have new samples to show you guys, I'll send another update.
Here are a few more samples of smaller pins:
So far the filler pins look perfect, no notes. The sun & moon small pins are the same story as the rest - working on getting smaller glitter.
I know that these photos show that the pins aren't quite there yet. It may take a few more sample iterations to get them just right, so that may cause some delays. I hope you guys understand. I'm not happy with how long these are taking, but I'm more concerned with making them look just right than I am with getting them out as quickly as possible, so thanks for your patience 🫶 I won't rest until they all look perfect!
Once I am happier with the new samples, I'll let you guys know! I will keep the surveys unlocked for the time being, so that you guys can make changes as needed when more samples come in!
I know I sent an email update yesterday already, but I'm sending another one today because the manufacturer sent me the first round of half-complete sample photos this morning and I wanted to share them! Very exciting!!
Right now, the only pins they've sent me pictures of are the standard pins. I don't have pictures of all the jumbo pins yet, so I will share those in another update later on when I have them.
These are half-complete, so here are a couple things to keep in mind:
These do not yet have the correct gold plating applied.
These do not have any screen printing applied.
First off, here are the original colorways:
The Sun
The Moon
Ordinary Star
Black Hole
Comet
Neutron Star
Supernova
Dark Matter
I'm ESPECIALLY in love with how Dark Matter turned out, he looks SICK AS HECK. Exactly what I was hoping for!
Here are the changes I'm planning to ask for:
Hoping for smaller glitter in The Moon's dark half. It's a bit too noisy right now.
I'm going to make some small tweaks to Neutron Star's hair gradient - mostly the outer color looks a little to green-tinted compared to the rest, so I'll be tweaking that color a bit.
The center of Supernova should be white with glitter instead of whatever weird purple color they have going on, though that might just be the color of the glitter coming through - still, I'm hoping they'll be able to adjust it to look more white instead.
Other than those changes, I'm quite happy with how these are turning out so far!
Next, here are the dark/alternate colorways and the cross-collab pin:
The Sun - Alternate
The Moon - Alternate
Ordinary Star - Alternate
Black Hole - Alternate
Comet - Alternate
Neutron Star - Alternate
The Moon has WAY too much glitter and it's too silver-y and the glitter is too large. I am going to ask them to use finer glitter so that it turns out looking more like my Patience pins from my Virtutes Angeolrum campaign, so it's more subtle and shimmery instead of...whatever that is right now 😆
Overall, the glitter is just too large and too noisy, and isn't quite the effect I was hoping for, so I'm going to do some back-and-forth with the manufacturer to make the glitter smaller/finer and look more pleasing.
I am hoping to tweak them so that the darker colors with glitter end up looking more like the clock face on this pin:
It's a little hard to see in the photo, but the effect in the clock face is more of a subtle shimmer that looks sooo pretty in real life. I am confident that the manufacturer can do something more like this with the darker glitter colors!
All-in-all, I'm pleased with the progress on these, and I am really looking forward to making the changes outlined and seeing the jumbo pin samples, too.
Surveys are still unlocked from the shipping price increase I announced yesterday, so if these pictures make you want to change your order, you can do so. Please keep in mind though that the pins have already been ordered, so any additional pin counts may result in delayed shipping and/or not having enough a-grades to cover all orders.
Anyway, that's it for this update! Hope you enjoyed seeing these progress pictures, and I'll talk to you again when I have more photos from the manufacturer!
I got word that the pins are FINALLY done, packed up, and on their way to me!
Here are some more pictures of finished pins:
Crescent Moon - Original
Crescent Moon - Dark Version
The Sun
The Moon
The Night Sky - sorry the picture is so low quality D:
And the filler pins too:
Not sure why they didn't send a picture of the white Trio filler. Probably just forgot, but oh well. Everything else is there!
Shipping Timeline
I do have one piece of sort of bummer news. Because of how expensive shipping has gotten with tariffs etc., I chose to opt for a less expensive shipping option from my manufacturer. It literally went from like $2000+ extra in shipping costs alone, down to $500. Unfortunately, this does mean that it will take a bit longer to get the pins than usual - about 18-22 days instead of the typical 1 week or less. Because of this, I won't be receiving the pins until late September, which means I won't be able to start shipping until sometime in October at the earliest.
I know that's a huge deviation from the original timeline, but...it is what it is. 😫 I really appreciate how patient and understanding you guys have been with this project. It wasn't supposed to take all year, but alas.
Charging Cards for Shipping + Add-ons
Once I have the pins in-hand, I'll be able to weigh them, update shipping costs, and finally charge cards in the pledge manager.
I estimate that I'll be charging cards around the end of September or early October. I'll post another update when I'm ready to charge cards to give you a heads up. Please make sure your payment method is up-to-date and that the funds are available around this time to avoid delays in receiving your rewards. If your payment fails at the shipping charge stage, you won't get your reward until you fix your payment.
That's all for this update. Thanks for reading and I'll catch you in the next update!
First off, a fun question: Did any of you get to watch the Perseid meteor shower this week?? My friends and I went out on Wednesday night to go try to see some of it, and we saw a handful of really good ones, but between storms blowing clouds into the region and some light pollution, we didn't get to see as many as we'd hoped. Maybe next year!!
Anyway, onto the update!
Finally, after months of waiting, I'm starting to see some completed pictures of the pins coming in from my manufacturer! These pictures are getting me SO excited, and I wanted to share them with you all as well!
FYI - The manufacturer used the wrong size of cards for most of these (they used 4.5" cards for all of them instead of 3.5"...oops!) so they look a lot smaller than they actually are. Don't worry, they're the promised size listed on the campaign page!
Original colorways:
Black Hole
Ordinary Star
Supernova
Comet
Neutron Star
Dark Matter
Stellar Nebula
Alternate colorways:
Blood Moon
The Sun
Sirius (cross collab pin)
Black Hole
Stellar Nebula
Ordinary Star
Supernova
Neutron Star
Dark Matter
Comet
Still waiting on pictures of:
The Night Sky (both versions)
Crescent Moon (both versions)
The Moon (original colorway)
The Sun (original colorway)
Filler pins
Early Bird pins (both colorways)
But so far these pins are looking really pretty and I'm so excited to see them in real life, and I hope these pictures get you guys excited too!!
I'll post another update if/when I get more pictures from the manufacturer. :) Until then!
SUPER relieving and exciting news for you today! My manufacturer has finally produced a sample for The Night Sky that I'm happy with and I have approved it, and I wanted to show you all.
It took much longer than I anticipated, but I am quite happy with the result. The pin in action is STUNNING - the shimmer is so pretty, exactly what I was hoping for with this pin.
With that, I'm going to do another 2-day warning to re-lock the surveys. If you want to add this pin to your order or any others, this is your final chance!
Thank you so much for all your patience while I've struggled with this, it's very greatly appreciated!
It's been a while, and I really wish I had better news for you. I was putting off making an update because I was waiting until I had finalized all the samples for the pins, thinking, surely it can't take much longer to finalize them? Unfortunately I was wrong. 😓
So let's get into it. First, the good stuff.
I've approved the samples for the Crescent Moon and Stellar Nebula pins, which is a big step at least. Here are the finalized half-complete samples for those two:
The crescent moon looks a bit odd as a still image, but I can attest that the opal effect looks really cool in motion. I'm sadly unable to upload videos to my updates, otherwise I would show you guys T.T
I've also approved samples for Neutron Star and Supernova:
The Night Sky Pin is being problematic. We've done multiple samples with different styles of effects at this point and somehow my manufacturer just isn't getting the effect I want even after sending them multiple example photos & videos. They even showed me samples of pins THEY MADE that had the effect I want, but on my pin, it's just not looking right.
I'm going to keep working on sampling it with them, because I KNOW my manufacturer is capable of it, so this one's just going to take a little longer.
So far, this is the closest sample they've gotten so you can get at least get an idea:
This just doesn't have quite the level of glimmer I was looking for based on the samples they sent me (which were super shimmery and GORGEOUS) and I'm not sure why they're having so much trouble replicating it on my pin :/ I'm going to keep trying. But if they can't get it right after the next few samples, I think I'll just tell them to go with the sample above.
In short, I'm getting really frustrated with the production on these. My original timeline put me shipping out orders to you guys this month, and the fact that they haven't even finished sampling them is driving me INSANE. I've NEVER had this much trouble with the sampling process before, nor have they been this slow about it. It has sometimes taken them a week or longer to make ONE new sample of a pin, so when it takes that long and is STILL wrong, the delays keep racking up.
I'm not the only pin creator that has experienced these delays - it's apparently an industry-wide issue as of late, so unfortunately, even if I wanted to switch manufacturers, most likely it wouldn't help or make things go any quicker. :/
I'm truly sorry for all the delays, but I promise you all that you WILL get your pins eventually. It's just taking so much longer than it should ðŸ˜
I'm back with more pin sample photos! Though I will preface with this: these pins aren't quite right at the moment, and you'll probably agree, so please know before diving in that I am already working with my manufacturer to fix these.
With that, here are the samples for the Crescent Moon and Night Sky:
The night sky especially needs a lot of work. The skin color looks all wrong - it's supposed to be a dark indigo/purpleish blue, same with the crescent moon's skin as well. My manufacturer is working on getting more suitable glitter colors in stock to make these look more like my artwork.
In addition, the opal flakes also aren't really what I was envisioning and I'm hoping they can tweak it to look closer to what I had imagined.
These two suffer from the same issue as the other alternate colorways with the very obnoxious multicolored glitter. I'm getting more samples made with different glitter so these are more subtle, and as soon as I have new samples to show you guys, I'll send another update.
Here are a few more samples of smaller pins:
So far the filler pins look perfect, no notes. The sun & moon small pins are the same story as the rest - working on getting smaller glitter.
I know that these photos show that the pins aren't quite there yet. It may take a few more sample iterations to get them just right, so that may cause some delays. I hope you guys understand. I'm not happy with how long these are taking, but I'm more concerned with making them look just right than I am with getting them out as quickly as possible, so thanks for your patience 🫶 I won't rest until they all look perfect!
Once I am happier with the new samples, I'll let you guys know! I will keep the surveys unlocked for the time being, so that you guys can make changes as needed when more samples come in!
