Limited Edition Translucent Enamel Nebulae Pins & cat beanies!
5 months ago – Fri, Nov 24, 2023 at 08:16:31 AM

Hey everyone!

I hope you're all doing okay this festive season :) 

Before releasing these I realised it's possible not everyone here is active on social media, so I wanted to let you all know I'll be releasing these 3 Limited Edition translucent enamel Nebulae cat pins at 9PM GMT tonight! £19.50 for Standards, £16 for Seconds.

Shop on my website and use the code " Nebula " for 20% off other items until December 1st! (limited edition items & random bundles not included). There's also a 35-50% off sale going on at my Etsy :) 

These are all filled with translucent enamel and have recessed stars, so they have a slightly ghost-like, soft enamel appearance to them. But they look funky when they catch the light!

I also now sell beanies and just added these space cats to the collection :)

The pins will be released at 9PM GMT, and these colours won't be coming back once sold!

Thanks for reading,

ChocolateRaisinFury

All packages complete!!
12 months ago – Thu, May 04, 2023 at 08:02:47 AM

We are all finished!!

As of today the last 25 packages have been packed up and will be shipped out on Saturday, and that means we are all complete! Hooray!

All international orders (which is about 90% of backers) - may take between 2-6 weeks to arrive. Most should arrive in 10 working days, but for various reasons packages can see hefty delays. 

If your pins haven’t arrived after the 9th of June please contact me and I will ship out replacements. 

Small reminder that unfortunately I cannot label packages as gifts as I operate as a limited company, so where applicable packages will be subject to customs fees.

General Pin Release

I will be releasing the pins for sale in my stores on Friday 26th May - so if you’d like to pick up any extra, this is the time! 

Thank you

Thank you again to everyone for making these pins possible. Self-funding these designs would have taken years, and it’s been so wonderful to see all the solar system together :) now I just need to make the remaining dwarf planets!

Shipping to begin soon!
about 1 year ago – Thu, Mar 30, 2023 at 02:01:07 AM

Hey all!  

Thanks for your patience so far! This was written while my 2 month old has finally fallen asleep in my arms after her first jabs, so this update will be fairly brief (unfortunately I couldn't post it at the time as the kickstarter app was messing up).

Good news is the pins are almost all packed and the shipping process will begin later next week! Hooray!!! 

Shipping addresses will be locked in one day! - So please make sure your addresses are correct. I cannot take responsibility for packages shipped to wrong addresses if they are not updated.  Hopefully you will all have an e-mail from backerkit with the details.

I just want to reiterate again that much of this campaign is being completed during newborn naps and when my friend is able to be here to do part time work. This means things are moving slower than other campaigns but I promise you it is constantly moving. We very much want these pins to go to their new homes! This schedule however can be very taxing, so if you see others get their pins and it’s taking a while for your package - please don’t worry. We will be working on it :)  

Thank you again for those of you who have left comments of support, it truly means a lot ☺️

Progress & Card errors
about 1 year ago – Sun, Feb 26, 2023 at 05:59:51 AM

Hey all!

First of all I wanted to say a HUGE thank you to everyone’s incredibly supportive comments on my last update. It’s been a huge struggle managing a newborn and finding time for work inbetween (much harder in recent weeks due to colic and other problems. Lack of sleep & exhaustion being one of them) - but your support made me incredibly emotional and allowed me to take a little more time with her in these weeks which disappear so quickly, as well as time to recover from sleepless nights.

However, I’m working through it (and have discovered the magic of carrying my daugher in a sling while she naps to leave my hands free for pin packing & grading!), and the pins are still making progress - especially with my friend helping me parttime. I am still hoping to begin shipping in March. 

Card Errors

There are still some cards who’s payments aren’t going through - I see many of them were updated but unfortunately were still declined. 

If you wish to continue with your pledges I can send you custom PayPal invoices - just message me on here and I will set it up for you :) The deadline for contacting me is now the 12th of March, and payments must be made before shipping begins (I will know this date a little closer to pins being packed). 

Thanks again everyone, you are all wonderful!

Life update & pin packing is underway!
about 1 year ago – Sun, Feb 05, 2023 at 03:01:48 AM

Hey all!

First off, I have to deeply apologise (again) for the sporadic updates on this project. I haven't been as professional as I would have liked for this campaign, and I do apologise for those of you who have been waiting for an update so far. I was focusing all my efforts on grading and packing pins to get them finished for February, but unfortunately I had large upsets occur during December which badly affected the workload of my business (the UK postal service Royal Mail unexpectedly added extra strike dates in December, which resulted in an unprecedented number of my customer's christmas orders being delayed or going missing, and in early January they suffered a cyber attack which had resulted in all outgoing international mail being halted or lost for several weeks). Coupled with the holiday season, this made December and early January very busy, and knowing I was due to give birth at the end of January - I was focusing my efforts on on getting pins packed and ready to go. 

Then, as of one week ago, while being so very close to finishing everything ready to begin shipping, I went into the first stage of labour. It lasted for a while and a few concerns lead the doctors to try to induce me, but before this happened my baby was showing signs of distress despite not being in the second stage of labour.  A quick decision to save my baby going into further distress resulted in an emergency c-section. 

The good news is my baby and I are safe and healthy, the bad news is I am now recovering from a major surgery on-top of having a newborn child, which has made the final stages of fulfilment a little harder. 

The other good news is I only have about 300/400 Jupiter Ultraviolet left to grade, and 8 pin designs are packed and ready! I have hired help once a week to help me pack pins (and she is a pro now!), but I have to double check all the pins before packing to make sure no heavily flawed pins snuck past the grading process. I also have Mel from AlchemyArtGroup helping me keep ontop of other work things and helping me stay sane.

I am still hoping to begin shipping soon, but it may be in March instead of February. At the moment due to the Royal Mail cyber attack, they have only just re-opened international shipping. which means everyone in the country with international packages will be flooding the post offices - so hopefully by March any backlog of international orders will be cleared, preventing any packages from this campaign getting lost or delayed.

Now, onto the pins!!   

Grading

I have had to be more lenient with my grading on some of these pins, particualrly the bigger designs. Due to their size it’s easier for flaws to appear, so some may show small inperfections when in a certain light. This is next to unavoidable with hand-finished products, and I am having to accept not holding myself and my manufacturers to a difficult standard. 

Unfortunately some pins were worse than others. Black Hole, Neptune, and the Jupiter variants were some of these (and this manufacturer is very difficult to negotiate re-makes with.) But luckily, thanks to everyone’s generosity with this campaign, I was able to order 3 times the amount of pins needed. This means although some pins had a high flaw rate (Black Hole only had about 270 standards out of 900 pins ordered), I didn’t need to get them re-made specifically for the campaign - So nothing will be delayed!

Unfortunately, Jupiter Infrared in particular I had to be more lenient with grading. I only have just enough pins for everyone (With genuinely maybe 2 spare). I did not order as many Infrared as the others as I did not want an excessive number of leftover standards since this is a Kickstarter LE, but I still ordered plenty to have extra (or so I thought!). I have still tried to be as strict as possible with grading on these pins, but they may have more flaws than my usual standard. 

Unfortunately - this means anyone who has yet to fill out their survey will be unable to choose Jupiter Infrared. I am really sorry if this was one of your chosen pins, but in this case you can either message me for a seconds pin and a partial refund, or a full refund. 

Seconds of Jupiter Infrared (and all other pins for that matter) will be availale after the campaign is fulfilled, and C-grades will be sent to Alchemy Art Gorup in the USA for her to sell across conventions. 

CARDS & surveys!

A few backers have yet to update their payment details and fully answer their surveys. If you do not complete your card payments and fill in your surveys by the time I am preparing to ship, I will have to cancel your pledge! I unfortunately cannot chase backers individually, but if you have any questions please don't hesitate to reach out. The deadline for fixing your payments and answering your surveys is February 17th.

 Final Fulfillment

I have a lot going on in my life at the moment as previously mentioned, but I have put my Etsy store on holiday mode and will not be taking external orders for another week or so, so I can focus ALL my efforts on the pins in this campaign whenever I can, but please bear with me while my friend and I complete this last stage, while I am taking care of my newborn. I am hoping to blast through the final batch of pins so that I can give them to my part-time worker, and she can pack them up ready to go. Then packing orders will be the final stage! :)

Thanks so much to everyone’s patience on this campaign so far - i am excited to get these pins on their way to their new homes!