December 2023 Preview
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I hope you are all doing well, looking forward to a calm holiday season, and staying healthy. As we reach the final month of the year, I am so grateful to all of you whether you have been with us for years or just joined the club! 2024 is a year I’m very much looking forward to as I am working hard behind the scenes to release a lot of new collections, give myself some rest (at least physical rest) after the next few busy weeks of holiday vending, and hopefully Taka and I’s hard work will finally start paying off. As many of you may know, we’ve been struggling a lot financially this year, as most small businesses and probably many of you have as well. For us, it was a grave of our own making as we shuffled some numbers around to try to qualify for a really nice home loan next year, thereby making our taxes a little over the top for 2022 and 2023. Since we’ll have 2 years of solid looking income in 2024, we’re hoping the banks will take mercy and give us a home loan so we can finally stop renting at the insane Seattle rent prices and start paying mortgage at the insane Seattle (area) homeowner prices! 🤣 So, let’s be real, I’ll still be strugglin’ but at least it’ll be in the peace of my very own home (hopefully). Anyway, it’s time for me to show off December’s preview sketches which I should have wrapped up by the end of the weekend. |
PRETTY WINKERS: PS |
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We decided to end the year with Mamoru & Mimette. I know Eudial is the first Death Buster in Sailor Moon S, but I thought since we had red-head Kaorinite for November, we’d get a different hair colored cutie for the baddies! For Mamoru, we struggled to choose which wonderfully awful outfit we wanted to do, but finally opted for this cute color block design because it’s so playful which we don’t often see in Mamoru’s character. This is the outfit he wore in the episode where Usagi gets upset at him for forgetting her birthday (even though she never told him!). I didn’t pick this outfit because it was part of the S arc, but it is fitting since we’re doing the S baddies! And while he doesn’t wear sunglasses in this outfit, Taka thought it’d be fun to add (probably because the alternate outfit I sent him to do was the outfit he wears when he’s brainwashed in season 1 and has sunglasses on all the time). Also, Taka loves wearing sunglasses. Seriously, I always have to tell him he doesn’t need to buy another pair. 😑 |
PRETTY WINKERS: SG |
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First up of the Mononoke characters is none other than San herself. She’s winking, but it really is more of a scowl don’t you think? Pretty fitting for this environmental heroine if I do say so myself! |
MOUJUU CLUB |
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Finally, I don’t have a final preview for December’s Moujuu because Taka actually just left yesterday morning to go to Japan and meet with some legends in the tattooing industry, one who did his scalp tattoo last year, and another who is a tebori master he is hoping to observe shading technique from when he gets tattooed by them. His trip is pretty short, only a little over two weeks. Originally I was going to be going on this trip with him, but as this is the most lucrative time of year for small businesses that vend, we decided I’d be better off earning money to pay off the remainder of our taxes and hopefully set aside some money for next year’s taxes as well.
So please, forgive us for not having a solid preview just yet. This design would make an excellent pin, but it would be a little too large if we did this design, so he’s going to make a more compact design that will translate to a pin better. I’m sure he’ll get that to me in the next couple days, but in the meantime I can tell you that the final animal of 2024 is the Dragonfish. Dragonfish are not real, but a popular motif for tattoos and the myth behind it is if the koi fish can manage to swim all the way up the waterfall it will become a dragon. The dragonfish is in a state between fish and dragon. We decided on this motif as we are entering what is hopefully a transformative year of the Dragon. |
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PRODUCTION UPDATES |
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So things have started moving a little faster as I’ve been allocating different designs each month to different factories we work with. As you all know I’m slowly cutting off ties with my old manu which still saddens me after such a long working relationship, but after getting the latest batch from both my years-long back up manu and the newer manu, while the quality is good from all three companies, I definitely am finding a lot less B-grades with the other two than our old manu. And dare I say I feel like the metal polishing is sharper in the details with the newest manu? I’m not sure if it’s something you all would notice, but I certainly do as the designer. That said, I’ve unbagged all the latest batches of pins I’ve gotten in and these are the designs that are slotted to begin the grading process once I finish vectoring December’s designs:
Honestly, it’s so much to grade since I got two shipments in at the same time from different manufacturers, so I doubt I’ll be done grading til mid-December. Which leads me to the conundrum of do y’all want me to ship out your pins as soon as I finish grading and risk mail getting lost/stolen during the busy holiday season, or wait til January to ship everything out? I’m leaning towards waiting to ship out or ship in small batches of maybe 20 per day, but if you’d like to get it sent out as soon as I finish grading, please email me at shishidocreative@gmail.com and let me know! Also, if your address has changed since my last shipments went out last month, please let me know so I can update everything on the back end! |
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Thank you all so much for your continued support. I know I say this every single email, but it really does mean the world to us that we are able to continue being working artists. I hope I can spend my entire life doing art for a living, so thank you all so much. |