Howdy y'all!

All shipped orders have been delivered, including the few hiccups that manifested. BUT! If for some reason you never received an email from PirateShip OR your order, please reach out, comment, so I can see what's up and rectify. If your order has in fact, not shipped, let's get that taken care of.

I've gone and marked pretty much everyone as fulfilled outside of a handful of orders that seem to have been missed. Those will be double checked and attended to this week. (Sidenote: I think there is *one* backer erroneously marked as fulfilled yesterday. So yeah, please don't hesitate to to say something if you're not sure!) Since I have to manually import tracking numbers I'd rather spend the time getting my store back up and running.

Folks in the UK who also qualified for the freebie pin with AlstroArts have been marked as fulfilled, as I packaged and sent off your orders to their address. When they get to shipping Bouquet of Dragons you'll receive your entire Green & Gold order as well.

I have been taking photos and constructing listings on my etsy shop, and will be reopening it this week with a sale. It should have everything hosted from the campaign, with SPAAAACE Witch! stuff reappearing closer to October. I will be raising prices on many things next year, unfortunately, so this year is the best time to purchase if you were considering or wanted to share the shop link for others not in the know.

It's not all doom and gloom tho'! I am seriously impressed with the quality of the pins and magnets from this production. They all came out fantastic with a relatively low number of B-grades! In time I'd like to add bottle openers to what I'm offering, and get coasters back in stock. I know folks like the idea of aluminum tumblers + pint glasses but I do not have the space to store those products, unfortunately. They'd be a case of 'limited run by campaign' only production.
Actually what I'd love to produce is an itabag, and I already know what I'd do, along with some kind of wallet accessory, but that's a next year thing. Yes, it will be booze themed.

Issues I need to address:

This was me dropping the ball. Imports to the UK require an extra step and I did not take the effort to square that away. I need to do some more reading and consulting before my next project to decide what is the best path for my business. I certainly don't want to leave folks in the UK out, I need to square the cost for handling all that myself VS the complication of pairing with another artist and them taking on the burden.

Since I wrote that the the EU and UK have added on more burdensome for small artists/businesses rules, and I'm at a loss of what to do. This year has been rough and I have so very little reach, I'm not sure I will be able to ship outside the US for a while. The state of global trade for small businesses right now is ... *gestures wildly.*

 Regardless, how UK orders are handled will be clear before pledging support. If anyone out there has a guide or blog experiences on how to handle this stuff I'd be happy to do some reading. 

I was fortunate in that I purchased or had acquired all the shipping materials I needed long before fulfillment. When the tariff fiasco(s) began I went ahead and picked up extra boxes, packing material, tape, etc, which was relatively easy for a campaign that had "only" a few hundred orders.
It saved me some headache and helped when all other shipping costs increased.
Historically, the "winter holiday season" has more expensive shipping so I try to avoid fulfillment during that period, also because delivery delays and hiccups are more common.

However, since the campaign concluded in March 2025, shipping costs have increased multiple times across the boards for a host of reasons we can all be disgruntled about. Part of this I could have controlled better by waiting longer to collect shipping fees; at the time I thought I was *super close* to receiving the last pieces, but pulled the trigger too soon. The absolute chaos of rolling tariff changes I could not have predicted and had trouble accounting for. I ended up paying more for both shipping and tariffs to get pins to me, and given how reimbursement works as a tiny artist, I don't expect to be able to recover parts of those costs. And while I covered them personally because it did not feel right to back-fill ask for you all to do so, it will mean going forward I have no choice but to just increase prices across the board, and that includes calculations for how much it will cost to ship backer orders. (Yes, that includes shipping supplies.)

The Amber Ale and Stout pin unlocks I largely ended up covering myself as well, because I had enough folks with failed charges to pull back the support needed to fund them. This is just an unfortunate reality of working on small margins. Later survey add-ons helped cover another portion of their productions, thankfully.

Going forward, I accept a design may not be funded. I do like that with Backerkit I can set up stretch-goals via survey, to catch those close calls later. And I'll have to add more buffer between designs. While similar has happened before, this time was the most harsh difference because of the larger, more complicated designs.

My position on "this cost more than expected" is "that's something I need to handle." Either with my personal funds, or by leaving a design on the table. It's not to ask for backers to cover extra after the fact.

Was there something you'd like to see me address, touch on, or further explain? Leave a comment and I'll do my best.

As always, happy to answer questions, and cheers!
(Stay hydrated out there, folks, and glasses up as Oktoberfest is right around the corner!)