Flora & Feather - Enamel Pins & Bookcharms - Birds, Flowers, and Dragons!

Hello! I am stopping in with some more happy updates and pictures that I hope you guys enjoy :) The pins and charms that arrived look lovely. They really are beautiful and look so much like my sketches but shinier. I am so relieved and think you guys are really going to love them. 

I've spent the last few weeks since Dragoncon going through all the pins and charms that were sent to me to count the flawed ones and putting them on backing cards and I'm officially all ready to start shipping! I will be going to a WOE (World Oddities Expo) in Baltimore this weekend, (and should have started driving there already 😅) but I wanted to be sure to post an update before I left. 

I will be home Monday night and top of my to-do list is to get all of the orders that are from these two sets only shipped as fast as I can. It is just the first wave, but I can't wait to actually start getting these to all of you lovely people who have waited so patiently for them. I also have half of the remaining pins already ordered, and will be placing the order for the other half remaining probably within a week or two as well - since these turned out so pretty. 

There were just a few designs I had noticed small errors in the mold cutouts that I wanted to fix before ordering those designs - but I wanted to make sure they could even make the pins before dealing with that. So I hope to get that sorted next week and then order all the remaining pins.

The company has also assured me that now that we have everything sorted, they will be able to produce the next batch much quicker (a month or two) so I am cautiously optimistic to have all of these shipped out to you guys by the end of the year. I know it has been such a long time coming, and I really appreciate the graciousness you guys have had with me as I got my head back above water with this project. 

As I was going through the pins, I kept catching myself just thinking wow they turned out so pretty, and not quite believing that I was actually holding them in real life after all this time lol - so I hope you guys will feel the same way and that that will help make the wait more worthwhile 🖤

Ok without further ado, the pretty pictures:

The Honey Eater & Iris Trio

The Scarlet Ibis & Poppy Trio

And last but not least - the bonus unicorn pin :) 

I am really thrilled with how everything turned out - as I had begun to fear that what I was trying to make was just not possible. But here they are in all their shiny glory! 

As I said, I am going to start shipping any orders that can be fulfilled with these 7 designs as soon as I get back from Baltimore in a few days. And after that, hopefully the rest of the designs will not be long to follow onto their journeys to their forever home! 

Anyways, that is all for now. If you are in Baltimore, stop by the oddities show! I'd love to see you there :) 

I can't believe I am finally writing this - but the first round of pins and charms have shipped out from the manufacturer and are on their way to me!

This round took way longer to ship than I expected, as they had said they were about to ship almost two months ago - but regardless - they are now officially in the air :D

This first shipment includes all three of the scarlet ibis & poppy trio and all three of the honey eater & iris trio - plus of course the bonus unicorn pin. So any order that can be fulfilled with those 7 designs will be getting packed and shipped asap. I will need a few days to inspect every piece and be sure the quality is good (please for the love of all that is holy, be good quality) and then I will get that first round packed and shipped.

Any orders that have more than those 7 designs will wait until I have all the pieces I need to ship it all at once. But my hope is to do these waves as efficiently as possible, as I know you guys have graciously already waited a lifetime for these.

I also discussed the turn around time with the manufacturer as well, since these took the better part of the year already to do, but they assured me that it would not take this long for future batches. There was a lot of time spent where they fought to try and get the previous molds from the previous manufacturer who conveniently lost half our molds, then finding another company they could work with to source all the tassels and cords to match and having them custom made for the project, and double checking everything to make sure every detail was right. They said they wanted to make sure all of that was done properly even if it took longer. But they did assure me that going forward, normal turn around time on orders will be about two months. So with that in mind, I hope that finishing the rest of this project will finally pick up some speed.

I was originally planning to order two trios at a time to make sure of quality and not risk losing thousands more, but since we have 6 trios left after this, I've decided to split the remainder in half and order three trios next (instead of two) and then a final order for the last three trios. So the next round will be - crane & protea, owl & pear blossom, and grebe & cattail.

I am very excited to get started on those, but I need to double check and make sure this first batch turns out ok, before ordering the next batch, because I don't know how I would afford to start over for a third time. 😅 My apologies for the slow process, but I need to make sure to check everything before spending money I can't recoup if anything goes wrong. But I think that this is just an abundance of caution as everything I have seen so far looks great. Hopefully at least now that we are actually in motion and things are starting to ship this last phase will be way less stressful than previous ones now that there is a real end in sight.

Ok - enough with all the talking lol lets get to the fun part - pictures! They have sent me some more photos - including the bonus unicorn pin!



I was so happy to see that the unicorn pin printed so well! The previous manufacturer could not get light colors to print at all - and so the glowing hooves and horns, the little spots across its back - none of those would print before. But the new manufacturer used the same exact files and they printed perfectly :) and they sent me photos of them all packed up and ready to ship as well.

And speaking of pics of everything all packed up and ready to go:



This looks to be a bunch of the pins all packed safely for their journey :) and lastly - a picture of the charms all packed up but also one last shot of all 6 charms in their bags but showing how nicely the custom tassels and cords turned out for matching the colors.



Even though these aren't the prettiest photos - I was so relieved to see them and be able to see that everything is really real lol and on its way to me. So I thought you guys would feel the same. 

Ok - that's all for now! I had hoped to write this update a month or so ago - but after this long, the most important thing is that everything is done properly and that they turn out great for you guys :) 

Thank you, as always, for how much patience and faith you guys have have with me in the crazy long saga this project became <3 and hopefully seeing these photos helps show that it was not misplaced. There are real shinnies being made by much more competent manufacturers!