Hi cryptid lovers!

Super exciting news for this update - other than the people waiting for the mini Dullahan remakes, ALL PACKAGES have been shipped! It was SO MANY and boy the relief I feel finally having it all complete is real.

There are still around ~115 packages or so sitting in my house waiting to be picked up tomorrow, but everyone whose orders were able to ship should have received an email with their tracking information by now. 

Thank you all for your support on this campaign, it was my biggest to date and it was so fun making these pins for you!

There are a few things I still need to mention before completely wrapping up. :)

I know there's still a handful of you waiting for the mini dullahan remakes. I'm so sorry for how long it's taking, my manufacturer has been really dragging their feet with getting these remade. They're supposed to be on their way to me by now, but I still haven't received tracking information from them. I apologize for the delay.

Because of how long they're taking, I unfortunately won't be able to ship out remaining orders with the remade Dullahan pins until mid-December. I am leaving on December 2nd and will be gone on vacation for 2 weeks, returning December 16th. Assuming I actually have the pins in-hand by then, I will be working on fulfilling these orders as soon as I get back. 

Consider this your FINAL WARNING to fill out your survey and/or fix your payment if you haven't already. You will have one week from today to correct this before I close the project. If you have not filled out your survey or fixed your payment by then, all pledges and payments thus far will be considered donations to the campaign and will not be refunded, no exceptions. This has been stated throughout my campaign in multiple places since the beginning.

If you share photos of your pins from this campaign on social media, please tag me so I can see!! My username on all major platforms is @holoraindrops !! Please show me, I love seeing how people end up deciding to display my designs. 😁

If you encounter any issues with your delivery, please reach out to your local post office for information. Once the package is out of my hands, I have no control over it - that's all in the postal carriers' hands.

If you receive your order and you think something is wrong/missing, you can reach out to me at [email protected] and we will work out a solution.

Last but not least, I wanted to share my next campaign with you, Celestial Incarnations! 

This pin set will feature male personified characters of different celestial objects such as stars, nebulae, black holes, and more. I'm SO excited for this set, I'm already really proud of the sketches I've done for it so far and I think this set is going to be absolutely stunning. It's also going to be a fairly large set, with 13 base designs planned for it already, and potentially even more to come.

Here's a sneak peak of my first two refined sketches for the set:

If you want to view more thumbnail previews, check out the pre-launch page here: Celestial Incarnations

Thanks as always for your tremendous support, I always think about how wild it is that I can do this as my full time job, but I couldn't without the support of my awesome backers. Thank you so much!!

Until next time,
Rain

Hey cryptid lovers! 

Just wanted to give you guys a quick update since it’s been a few weeks! 

Shipping has begun as some of you know—I’ve sent out ~50 packages at this point and some of them have been delivered.

Things are a bit slow-going because I am trying to juggle this along with the next steps on The Dark Wood, but I am doing my best to go as quick as I can. I am still on track to finish shipping by Nov. 30th.

For Those who opted to wait for the green mini Dullahan—my manufacturer is saying they’ll ship out the remade pins next week. Once I receive those, people who chose to wait will get another address locking notification from BackerKit. If you opted for this, please note that your package may ship after Nov. 30th.

I appreciate your continued patience as things move a bit more slowly than I’m used to because of everything going on. 🙏 I’m trying my best to get through everything!

That’s it for now. I’ll talk to you again soon. Thank you!

Cheers,
Rain

Hey cryptid lovers!

Sorry it's been a minute since you heard from me, but thank you for your patience! :)

I am happy to announce that I have officially finished grading all the enamel pins! For the most part, the pins all looked great.

There was however one issue that came up when grading the freebie Neon Devil pins. The blue chrome plating on them turned out very poor, with some weird thing happening with the blue bleeding into the white of the hair and sometimes forming some weird globby things :(

This is a widespread issue that affected nearly ALL of the pins to some degree. I've already brought the issue up with my manufacturer, and they said that this is a common problem that can happen with chrome plating + hard enamel and it's really difficult to control, and they have offered a refund on them.

Unfortunately, I since these are the freebies, I cannot justify the time to have them remade or the pay to have them redone with another company. I've gone through all the pins and selected the ones that were least affected by the issue to send out to backers.

Since these are freebies, there's no refund option (since y'all didn't pay for them to begin with!), but if these issues bother you a lot, you have the option to opt out of receiving the freebie by either commenting on this update or sending me a message at [email protected] (please make sure you put your BackerKit email in the message somewhere so I can find your order) and I'll remove the freebie from your order.

I have been working with this company for 6+ years and never had pins turn out like this before. In the future, I will likely no longer be offering pins with chrome plating to hopefully avoid this issue happening again, unless I can find another company to do chrome plating better. Hard lesson learned :(
 
Thankfully, the rest of the pins in the order look great, and no other issues arose, which means I am ready to start shipping! 

After sending this, I am going to begin the 2-day process of locking addresses. Once you receive the email from BackerKit about it, you will have 48 hours to update your address if needed.

If you are having issues changing your address or you need to change it after the 48-hour window has passed, send me a message at [email protected] or submit a customer service request on the FAQ Page.

October 16-20: Out of office (tabling at Anime Nebraskon)
October 21: Launching next project (The Dark Wood)
October 22: Begin packing & shipping orders
November 6-10: Out of office (tabling at Twin Cities Con)
November 30: Projected shipping completion date

On the dates I am out of office, I may be able to still answer some inquiries via email & BackerKit, but please understand I can't guarantee it!

This is by far the most orders I have ever gotten on any of my campaigns, and it's going to take me some time to get all the orders out, so your continued patience is greatly appreciated! 💖

Last but not least, I would be super excited if you checked out the next campaign I'll be launching in less than a week on October 21st: The Dark Wood! The Dark Wood is a pin set inspired by European fairy tale characters, but with a dark twist!

If you made it this far, thanks so much for your time and attention, and I'll talk to you again later! Have a great weekend! :D

Cheers,
Rain

Hey cryptid lovers!

I'll be honest - today isn't going to be the best update! 😕

First off I want to address an issue with the Dullahan Mini Pin.

As I was initially going through all the pins, I was testing the glow colors to see how they looked and in the process I found out that the mini Dullahan pin was made with the incorrect glow color. It was supposed to be green, but the manufacturer used blue powder instead.

I wouldn't mind so much if it weren't for the fact that the manufacturer DID use the correct green powder for the large Dullahan pin, so now they don't match 😕

This is very annoying, and when I brought it up with my manufacturer they said that because they otherwise look fine, they won't remake them for me for free 😑 Even though I specifically stated in my order that I wanted green and it's on them for using the wrong color. C'est la vie.

Unfortunately for that reason, I don't want to reorder ALL the pins unless it's necessary, but I do acknowledge that there are some folks (possibliy a lot of you!) who will want the large and small version to match each other.

So I've made a Google form for folks who want the corrected color to fill out. Please keep in mind, that since the pins will need to be remade, it may take folks who choose to get remade pins longer to receive their order. Please fill out this form if you want to wait and receive the corrected green glow Dullahan mini pin:

Dullahan Glow Color Form

Anyone who does not fill out this form by the time I start shipping, I will assume is ok with receiving the BLUE glow pin and that's what they will be sent.

That's all for that news. Onwards to the rest of the update!

As some of you know, I'm planning to launch my next pin set next month on October 21st. Originally I had said that I was planning to have the Cryptid Crushes pins shipped out by then, which would have put me well ahead of my original fulfillment timeline.

However, I'm very behind on my preparation to launch The Dark Wood, so I have a lot of catch up to do to be prepared to launch. For the next few weeks leading up to launch I am going to be going hard on getting all the art and campaign graphics & information done so I actually have pins to sell 😂

So my new plan is to get all that done as quickly as possible so I can shift focus back to fulfilling Cryptid Crushes. This does mean that my original plan to fulfill them beforehand is no longer viable, and for that I apologize.

The good news is, even considering that delay, I should still be on track to ship the pins out in my originally stated timeline on the campaign page, which is November at the latest. I am hoping to use the time that The Dark Wood is running to ship out Cryptids.

Thanks in advance for understanding!

Phew, that was a long update - Thank you to any one who bothered to read this far, I appreciate you!

Sorry this wasn't the most fun update, and I again appreciate your understanding in the matter. I am just one lil dude running all this stuff and trying to balance everything is definitely a skill I'm still developing, so thank you for your patience!

Until next time!

Cheers,
Rain