I have some not great updates and (hopefully) a more cheerful update.
✨ Flora & Feather Update: To start with - the manufacturer for the pins & bookcharms has created even further delays. Starting in early December, they just ghosted me and stopped responding to any of my emails. This came right after we had just had our first promising move forward on the UV print layers. I was finally able to get a reply from them about a week ago and they told me the rep I had been working with was no longer with the company. I have no idea why no one else from the company followed up with me when she left, or why my emails went unanswered for almost a month. But the new rep said she would pick up where we left off. Unfortunately, her English seems to be so limited that she can't understand the majority of my emails and just ignores every question or instruction I ask of her. They said they were reprinting the next set of UV layers I sent them but that was a week ago and they are not answering again. I feel so terrible for how long these delays are going for all of you to get the pins and charms you ordered. But unfortunately, I am completely stuck fighting to make any headway with this manufacturer. I am seriously considering starting over with another company, as I am starting to belive that may be the only way forward. But if I do that, I will be losing probably $10k out of my savings to cover the switch. So I am begging and pleading with this manufacturer to try and make any progress on the pins and charms. The molds all came out beautiful, and even the enamel layers look lovely - it is only the UV layers that have us stuck and not being able to communicate at all has severely limited my ability to troubleshoot the problems with them. But that is the current state of things with the pins and charms.
I wanted to reassure all of you though, that I am still hard at work on them. It keeps me up at night from the stress of trying to get through to them and is the first thing I check on every morning when I wake up. It may still take a good while before I can get these made, but I want all of you to know that one way or another, I will get these finished for all of you. And I am determined to make sure they are worth the wait.
✨ Pintopia 2025 - Sorceress Pins: Secondly, I wanted to talk about the next Pintopia event happening this month. I'd hoped Pintopia would be in March as it was last year, but they moved it up to January which gave me less time to wrap up everything from this campaign before the next one. But I've decided to go ahead and participate in this month's Pintopia with a few new pins for my Sorceress series.
Because so much of this Flora & Feather campaign is delayed on the manufacturer's end, there isn't much I can do in the long days and weeks between their replies, other than email them repeatedly. So this new campaign wont in any way take away needed time from finishing this last campaign.
This new campaign, I am designing to be much simpler - I am only doing about 5 designs rather than 25, they will not have any special effects, like UV printing or metal alternate colors, and they will only be pins rather than bookcharms. So with all these safeguards in place towards simplicity, they should be much easier and quicker to manufacture. And I am really excited about this new pin series!
Each of these sorceress pins will be an extra large art piece - about 4-5 inches designed to be displayed on a 5x7 gold foil card, framed on a wall or shelf. I am leaning into an Art Nouveau style for this set. Here is a little peak at the direction we are going for these:
And I want to thank everyone again for how patient and understanding you have all been as I work on getting these pins finished. Your trust and enjoyment of the art I make is the most important part of this process for me and I am committed to stay true to that and honor that - no matter the difficulties and obstacles I encounter.
