Good afternoon, criminals!

Been meaning to get this one out for a couple days, but, I'm tired, shit's busy, and it's been sitting as an empty draft with a title since Tuesday. Oh well.

If you missed your survey, you have until October 30th to contact me. I'll chew you out a little, but, you still have time to fix funds, pick your pins, and get anything on the back end corrected. Contact me at [email protected] if you need a little leeway.

Speaking of October 30th, that's the estimate the factory gave me for all of DOG CRIMES' pins being finished. Now, I'm taking that with a grain of salt, since shit happens and I have some samples that'll need to ship with them, but, good ballpark. 

Proofs were approved, and production started last week, and I'm going to do my best to make sure my little problem children are workshopped and don't hold up the thousand-something pins backers are waiting for.

Now, there are a couple of fun things to go over for DOG CRIMES.

If you're a veteran on CRIMES projects, the previous pins have been sepia-toned hard enamel with screen printed text. We are making a couple of changes to this run.

First off, we're slightly changing the background color on pins. Pantone is a color system that relies on ratios of pigment drops put into a base, and each code has an assigned amount of primaries. We had a gray with a white % mix on BIRD CRIMES and CRITTER CRIMES. This is a pretty common technique in enamel for getting pastel colors, but it's something that can create unwanted variations. After many hours of "I'm going to harass Doreen from the other bird business for her pastels book," we're moving CRIMES' background color to stock 9100c going forward.

Second, I'm making the choice to transition to UV printing. It's cheaper, it's more reliable, and it solves some issues we've had with scuffing, scratching, and misalignment knocking B's out automatically. UV can have some undesirable "comic book dot" effects depending on the manufacturer and colors used. But, I have some samples from this new factory, and they can get very sharp edges on text. 

Neither of these changes will make DOG CRIMES a black sheep in your collection. However, some of the reprints may have noticeable differences in color or text texture - so, please don't be surprised! It's to keep these troublemakers consistent in production, and keep them in good shape longer.

If none of that matters and your eyes just went in two different directions: don't worry about it. We'll probably be grading and fulfilling pins this winter if all goes well.

The HUSTLE store is open. If you want to snag anything from me, you can do that now and request combined shipping with your DOG CRIMES pledge in your order note.

Make sure if you do, you specify you want your stuff in with DOG CRIMES. I still have about 190 combined shipping orders for CHALLENGE COIN CRITTERS waiting, and if you backed both, let's cut the confusion.

Other than that, I need to go crunch my November project and get that ready enough to link it to you fuckers. We're in the boring waiting game now. Thanks for reading.