A History Lesson & Art Dump

Good afternoon, everyone!

I hope you are all doing well and that summer has been good to you all. As you all know, summer has been a nonstop busy fest for me, but I’m looking forward to doing a little bit less markets in the coming months and more CREATING! I mentioned in last update that I had more to share, but I got so busy with helping my family unexpectedly all month. Monday was the first day in 3 weeks that I actually got to spend an entire day at home without leaving the house AT ALL! 

FILIPINX DESIGNS

Ok, so one design I’m really excited about is based on the Filipino Lingling-O. Even if you’re not Filipino, you may have seen the lingling-o because it is also seen on rare occasion in ancient Taiwanese and Vietnamese cultures as well. What is a Lingling-o? It is like an amulet or omamori, meant to symbolize fertility. The circular shape with the opening represents the uterus, while the negative space between the opening is somewhat phallic in nature. Some designs are more overtly so, but while I was designing my own, I realized the negative space also reminded me of a crescent moon, the bottom half circles as half-moons, and the overall circle as the full moon. When I looked at other lingling-o designs, I also felt they looked somewhat like phases of the moon, so I began to play around with the concept of the moon’s phases as the moon has always been a source of power and inspiration for feminine energies and deities. While the lingling-o was initially a symbol for fertility to bless a woman during pregnancy, it also was worn to manifest an abundant crop or fishing expedition, which in turn, sustains the tribe.

As indigenous roots begin to be re-discovered, a modern view of the lingling-o is that it can also represent creation in our lives, whether that is in the form of art, music, dance, or heck, even creating a new information structure to simplify workflow. I hope the lingling-o will serve to bring blessings of abundance and manifestation to anyone who chooses to wear this symbol.

As I also mentioned earlier, my choice to also create the other lingling-o designs in a sort of moon phase style was so if anyone wants to use them as a moon phase on their pin boards or even worn, it is an option. The moon is also a very important matter in indigenous Filipinx culture as there is my personal favorite diwata (deity), Mayari, a female warrior, sister to the sun diwata, Apolaki. When their father, Bathala, passed the two fought tirelessly for control of the heavens. She lost her eye in the battle which is why the moon is more dim than the sun. Her brother, feeling bad for hurting his sister so badly and seeing she wouldn’t give up, surrendered the fight for power and agreed they would share in the governing of the heavens. I appreciate this story a lot because it to me illustrates the importance of equality. The brother didn’t give in out of pity, but remorse at the possibility of losing his sister entirely. He knew she was an indomitable force to be reckoned with and that if they continued to battle, one of them would no longer exist. He’d rather work alongside his sister than have one of them die.

Furthermore, the question of patriarchy or matriarchy isn’t really important in pre-colonial “Philippines.” Please note I say the “Philippines” loosely, because truthfully, the nation wasn't really a single nation, but hundreds of tribes on three islands, many with varying views, beliefs, languages, etc, influenced by Austronesia, India (especially in southern Mindanao islands), China, and other neighboring SE Asian countries. During pre-colonial Philippines, indigenous tribes were more matriarchal—which I hope is not confused to mean it was a full on matriarchy, because it was not. Women were however seen as equals to men and just as easily could be leaders, warriors, healers, if their actions/deeds merited those titles. Women were not blamed if they couldn’t have a baby and in fact were granted the choice to take a new husband if her current husband could not get her pregnant, placing more blame on the husband. Of course, if they chose to be together without child, that was also fine. My interest in the lingling-o is that it combines both the masculine and feminine energies, noting the importance of both being in balance.

I know my explanation for my inspiration isn’t really linear, but I do hope you can recognize the passion, excitement and thought process that was behind this mini collection of lingling-o and the intention behind the small interpretations I made in the design.

Also, as a final note on this topic, I chose gold because prior to colonization, the Philippines was known for its excessive amounts of gold and it has the second largest gold deposit on the planet. Gold was so abundant that nearly everyone wore gold, even children and slaves. Gold being an abundant resource of the Philippines, I wanted to make the lingling-o pins gold as a reminder to appreciate the abundance and manifest it as well in your own life. I do however, also hope, if I can meet up with a friend of mine who specializes in Jade jewelry, to source some Jade lingling-o designs for some jewelry. If you scroll back up to my inspo, you'll see that there were also Nephrite jade lingling-o carved prior to the discovery of gold jewelry. I also love, especially that it was Nephrite because me, being a forever sailor moon fan, always loved the sexy feminine-masculine energy of baddie turned good, Nephrite. In fact, I feel his trust in the stars (in the 90s version) gives him the most divine energy and I am all about it. 🤣 I can totally see Nephrite rocking a lingling-o.

ART DUMP

Ok, history lesson over! Now time for some lighthearted fun sketches! I had to do a restock multiple times of my nyango pins as well as restock the Ghost & Froggy dango pins, so I thought about sketching up some more dango designs for fun. I like sketching them since they're not too hard to draw and delightful to imagine as an actual mochi dango!

I'm considering that if I do end up making a ton of these designs, I may just run a small kickstarter since I've got so many themes I want to play around with, both original animals and characters. I will be upfront that if I do any of the fan art designs, I will likely hide the images on my KS to be careful. Also, highly likely I won't be listing any extras on the website for Spam-ree-o except maybe in the secret shop, or IG live shopping or PopShopLive, which I've been considering doing again now that I'm gonna be doing a little less markets with summer ending.

Anyway, just wanted to show y'all the rough sketches of this little project I may undertake next month! :) Also, if you have any ideas you'd like to see sketched out, let me know! :)

SG SKETCHES

Also, I wanted to quickly show you the sketches for next month's SG theme pin. I know she/they won't be as popular because people mainly only like to collect pretty/cute/handsome characters, but you all know how much I love to represent characters that don't get a lot of attention. SG Members will be able to choose which sister they'd like to receive, but can add on the second sister at a discount (I'll send a code to SG/Docchimo/Triple/Yokubari tiers) in case any of you is a completionist. :p Non-SG tier members can also add-on either sister, but at the normal add-on price. Like Ursula and Rin, I will likely only do an LE70, maybe even LE50 for each of these.

OTHER PIN CLUB TIERS

Taka has been struggling with some of the animal sketches this month, bouncing between normal doggies (Shiba inu) or doing a wolf. They're all fine sketches, but I don't think any of them is good as a pin design, so I keep sending him back to the drawing board. 🙈 But we should have those sketches for Moujuu and SM done in a couple days for the next update.

SLOWING DOWN

Now that things are sort of going back to at least some semblance of normal, I am looking forward to doing less markets and definitely not dealing with anymore family stuff, other than my now-weekly check in with my grandparents. I'm looking forward to being able to pack up a bunch of the pins from April-June (varying on which club theme). SG and Moujuu are already packaged, so just grade and package for the SM ones. Once that's wrapped up I'll be finally taking product pics so I can do an update for extras.

ATTENTION SM Tier Members:

I do want to bring to attention one bad thing I noted while unbagging all the Mako-chan design. The SM winkers are always a minimum of 2", but when hair or other flowy things break out of the frame, I make sure they heart remains the same size. However, it seems that my manu (the one I'm trying to cut ties with for yet another reason such as this), decided to make the entire pin 2". That means, the heart and therefore overall pin is smaller than it should have been altogether. It's closer to the size of our retired Cutie Moon and soon-to-be-retired Baby Love pins. This upsets me of course, but I cannot justify making the pin a second time, as I planned on making all these newer city girl pins a one-and-done run. Therefore, I wanted to let you all know that I'll plan on sending anyone expecting the Mako-chan an extra mini pin when I ship out the 6 mo gifts. The 6 mo mini pin gifts should be in soon. Everyone in SM tier will be getting 2 filler pins, so expect an extra if you were expecting Mako-chan. If you do not want the extra filler pin, I can also credit you $5 to our shop, but you will need to email me if you'd like the extra credit instead, but I do think the filler pins are rather nice if I say so myself.

Another thing I needed to note is that there was a change to August's Michiru design though I forgot to mention sooner, due to all the busy-ness of taking care of my family. I do hope you all know that while I was busy from 6:45am to 9pm most days for about 2 weeks, I still made sure to stay on top of my responsibilities to you all, so even if I wasn't always posting, I was definitely working behind the scenes.

It's not too big a change, but still a small change to the base of her frame. Instead of the star shape which I used in the Sailor versions of the outers, I'm going to be using the planet design for each of the outers' transformation pens since we haven't done that yet. I hope you all don't mind that small change.

Also, when I showed you all the phoenix preview, I forgot to save the file that had the phoenix's screen print, so here is the actual final file design:

OK, I think that just about wraps up everything! I hope you can all enjoy the last few weeks of summer. I'll have more to share in a couple days. I'm also sending out all the google forms for choosing this months' designs. So sorry it took so long to get those out to you all and thank you all for being so patient with me this month during all the unexpected family stuff! 😖

- Mandy & Taka