The finished concept art design of “Rocking Horse Fly” has gone into production now as the August Pin of the Month!
This one’s a little different, one of the critters from my “Looking-Glass Insects” Alice illustration here (prints available https://strangeling.com/shop/fine-art-prints/alice-in-wonderland-art-prints/looking-glass-insects/ )
I changed the colours – since the Rocking-Horse-Fly is sort of an ancillary character that I want as a stand-alone pin, I want it also to sort of match along with the same enamel palette we used on “Alice in Clockwork” and some of the sort of steampunk palettes like “Clockwork Valentine Masquerade” etc.
A lot of gears are churning behind the scenes on the pin front! We’re hoping to meet our next Patreon Goal ( https://www.patreon.com/jasminebecketgriffith ) by this Autumn, that way with things sewn up in California we’ll be able to hire a new Strangeling team employee in Florida fulltime to help us out with Strangeling Pin order fulfillment and packing, which is going to help us all and streamline things a ton. It should mean much more regular shipping dates, a dedicated team member as a point-of-contact for questions on orders or Pin Collector Tier shipping etc., and means that the monthly packages and our own frantic shipping nights won’t ever be delayed if I’m at the California studio or if we’re at a convention in the UK (our constant travel schedule has always made it hard to fly home crazily to try to ship out a thousand boxes from Florida on a regular basis, lol). Effectively, this should also free me up for more painting, free Matt up for travel and obligations related to his comedy career, and free us both up to expand on providing more fun content for Patreon/Twitch online.
And also it makes more time for me to get more creative designing new pins! We have been listening to all of your suggestions and ideas up here at Patreon/Twitch, and of course the Facebook Strangeling Pins/Collector Group ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/strangelingpins/ ). If I’m no longer bogged down by the more mundane aspects of the Pin production/shipping, I can instead spend that time drawing/painting new pin concepts and working on hiring more technical help with the factory to work with me on some new ideas (I have all sorts of zany notions – pins with dangling elements, maybe birthstones, moving parts, different materials, sets that fit together, lighting effects, etc. etc.) to see if they can be possible. Some exciting stuff =)
One of my priorities is to (once we have a dedicated Pin Team Member) put more focus on our Mystery Pin Packs, so that we can make them available more often and provide a wider assortment of pins (we are thinking about maybe even making a few pins sort of just for trading, prizes and Mystery Pin Packs, like how Voodoo in Green is, that has been fun!). This also will be more lucrative for those of you in the $50+ Pin Collector Tier, as you’ll receive a Mystery Pin Pack any month we do a release of them up at Strangeling.com – and this would mean a higher frequency if we have somebody helping us out full-time with the pins in Florida.
We’re headed to Kansas City soon to visit family for the Fourth of July! It’ll be the first time I’ve been back to my KC studio since 2019. I’m sort of excited about entering my studio there for the first time in a couple years – I know I have some artwork in progress still there unfinished, probably a bunch of sketches I’ve forgotten about, fun stuff we can add for Twitch prizes, and importantly – a TREASURE TROVE of pins that I haven’t had access to for years. I have no idea what I’ll find there, but we’ll no doubt have an infusion of new blood for the Mystery Pin Packs coming up in the near future. I can’t wait to finish up some of those pieces I’ve started painting there too – yay!
Speaking of the $50 Pin Collector Tier – we’ve realized we will need to cut off/limit the number of Patreon Members at that tier. We are planning to limit the $50 tier to 200 Patrons, since the tier includes the Mini Metal Pin Set Limited Editions of 250, we can’t accidentally have more than 250 customers, lol, if that makes sense. It’s a website item too, so we can’t accidentally oversell the Limited Edition.
Currently it looks like there are 129 Patrons in the $50 tier, so once it fills up to 200 Patrons no more will be accepted (then it will be whenever slots open up if somebody cancels or downgrades). I’d recommend if you are interested – upgrade sooner rather than later – that way you’ll be secured in to automatically receive the upcoming “Seven Deadly Sins” sets and will be guaranteed in to receive the new Mystery Pin Packs once they start getting extra cool 😉 You get all the perks as the $25 tier does, and you also get the Top Secret access posts (I’ll be making one of those later today).
Here in Long Beach we have a refrigerator delivery today (yay!) and then this afternoon we’re gonna try to set up the mics, lights & cameras for Twitch to make sure we have everything for our livestream broadcast tomorrow (Saturday at 3PM ET/Noon Pacific/20:00 UK https://www.twitch.tv/jasminebecketgriffith ). Definitely try to join us if you can! Again, it’ll be a TEST episode, it may be wonky, short, technical difficulties, or canceled, lol. We just got the cable guy out here and we’ve never done much internet stuff yet here, let alone a livestream. Bear with us!
x
Jasmine
