Good afternoon, Lion-Pups!

I really hope you’re all doing well, staying warm and healthy. This update is mainly for the Moujuu/Docchimo/Yokubari members, but please feel free to read along if you’re interested in some behind-the-scenes stuff as well as some future updates/production updates.

MOUJUU CLUB

I want to apologize once again to you Moujuu club members on the tardiness of the dragonfish design, especially since if I knew we’d be sticking to the original sketch after all, I could have shown you the finished piece sooner.

My initial concerns with the design despite really liking it, was that I didn’t think screen print would look good on the tiny scales and I though it should have screen print like our koinobori design. But after seeing other sketches where Taka either shortened the dragonfish or hid some of its body under a wave design, it just didn’t have the same flow as the initial design, so we finally agreed the original design was best even if it doesn’t have screen printing. Our original 2021 dragon design doesn’t have screen print and it looks fantastic and is a bestseller for us, so sometimes more isn’t always more.

I’ll be waiting to send you all the variant selection form til after Taka gets home tomorrow because I’m sure he won’t like the colors I chose! haha Taka and I may be really good at mimicking style and understanding each other’s flow when it comes to linework, but one thing we are very different on is color theory. Taka insists he has perfect color choices, but lemme just tell ya, he calls the blue shell in Mario games a purple shell. Also his dad has color blindness, so I’m just sayin’ his colors might be a little off.. Not saying he isn’t really good at colors, but some of them make me like 🤔 Myself, on other hand, I do know I tend to go for more muted colors as opposed to super bright neons/jewel tones, which I think may have something to do with my love of art nouveau/vintage/antiqued/aged things in general. I definitely gravitate towards warmer tones, lighting, etc which is interesting since cool colors are my preference.

PRETTY WINKERS: PS

Speaking of color theory, in my last update I wasn’t happy with the colors on the previews. When I vector I use my Wacom Mobile Studio Pro, which while a great computer tablet, it has a very very warm color cast so when I choose colors on my tablet and then see them on my iMac, it can sometimes be a huge shock! Mimette’s hair and the blue on Mamoru’s color block shirt were so much darker on my iMac than on my tablet, so I’ve since chosen different pantones as you can see in this latest update. I do usually also print out the designs so I can put them on my event displays as previews and that helps me to see the final colors. While there is honestly no such thing as a perfect color registration for any monitors, even between the same models of device, I tend to find that my final product looks closer to the Mac products than Windows products, no shade to either users since I think they both have strengths and weaknesses. No changes to the San design, so I won’t include image here this time.

UNDER THE WEATHER… (again)

If you’re interested in what’s going on behind the scenes, feel free to read on. It’s probably my own fault for not masking as much these days unless I am myself sick, but I have come down with yet another cold. :( Well, either it’s a new cold or it’s the same one I had before Taka left that maybe never fully left my system and then got worse because I wasn’t resting. >_<

In any case, I am sick again (or still). I have tested at least 8 times in the last couple weeks and I have not been positive for Covid any of the instances, and no real symptoms besides fatigue (which honestly is probably more to do with me pushing myself so hard), sore throat (which can also be due to having to chat all day during Thurs-Sunday at events), and an occasional cough or sniffle. My gosh if I’m not traumatized by the pandemic (aren’t we all?) though, and I think every single little throat tickle is covid.  I’ve generally always had an amazing immune system, so my multiple ailments this year have really taken me aback! I suspect my immune system is generally not up to par anymore which is wild to me because I used to be surrounded by strangers all day everyday. I spent about 7-8 years working in restaurants with my peak being ~60 hrs a week as a waitress between 3 busy restaurants, taking public transport to university (doing school full time, too) or downtown where I worked, and sometimes at packed bars/venues for shows. I did this for YEARS and I’d maybe get a cold once every two years.

I suppose not being around other humans for nearly 3 years though will kinda kill any herd immunity I was around before and after about 3 years of not getting sick during pandemic really made me forget what a cold is like. I’d still say it hasn’t been too miserable other than the physical exhaustion, which as I mentioned, might just be literal exhaustion from hustling so hard. So even though I’m not 100% well, I have had to still spend two weekdays this week vending, with only Monday free to run errands, and today is my first full rest day in weeks!

I have two more events, one tomorrow and one Sunday and then I’m done for good til late January. In total, by the end of Sunday, I’ll have done 64 unique markets, 81 market days (since some events are multiple days) this year, which is crazy because there are only 52 weeks in a year. 🙃

HUSTLER SMARTER

I sincerely hope I won’t have to hustle so hard next year, but I suspect I will given the economy and my undoubted amount of tax I’ll owe for this year as well since we still need to buff up our income numbers for house bank loan reasons. 🥲

While I’ll likely be hustling hard next year, I really  do plan to hustle smarter. I am planning to be more picky about which markets I vend at. I’ll vend a little less, and focus my energy online more. I’m also planning to release more collections outside of the pin club, finish up the princesses project for the club, and work on new product lines. Themes will include astrology, diwata and aswang, other fandoms such as Yu Yu Hakusho, Utena, Madoka, and Avatar. I’ll also be putting my efforts towards more stationery goods such as stickers, more riso prints, hanafuda sets, letter sets, washi, notepads, totes, etc.. If there are some types of items you’d love to see more of in the future, please let me know! This is the time for ideas and creativity to flourish! With the events getting out of the way, I’ll be focusing the rest of December on quality checking and packing your club boxes, sketching, prepping 2024 pin clubs (we’re gonna be getting a lot of designs done quicker), and I’ll try to relax a bit too!  Below are some of the pins in hand, I also have Aluminum Siren and Lead Crow, Shiba Inu and Daruma, but forgot to take pics while I had good lighting! These are designs from our original manu, except Shiba Inu and Daruma who I produced from our secondary manu.

I’ve also got two shipments on the way! The new manu produced the 6 mo gift filler pins for Ghibli club and Professor Tomoe & Hotaru which are all on the way. And old manu who we’re slowly phasing out of making new designs has a package on the way but with their always bad communication these days, didn’t bother to tell me what it has. I assume the tiger and some restocks of Kiki and other original designs.

And finally here are some pics of the designs from our secondary, but they’re kinda becoming our other main manu (so I’ll be generally using two manus from now on). Below the top 3 designs are in hand, the Boh, Lace Locks and Momonga are still with manu. Also, those were manu pics of shiba inu and daruma, I promise they’re much brighter and cuter in real life!