May Preview

Hi everyone!

Hope you're all doing well! Taka and I had a really lovely time in Boston area with my family and we just got back on Monday night. We've sent out any orders placed while we were gone (unless it had a preorder as part of it), and have just been finishing up on next month's designs and doing housework.

MANU UPDATES

This time around, I'm going to do pin manu updates first, because, why not?

As most of you know, manufacturers seem to be running just fine with production, however, since a lot of the region where pins are made is in a sort of lockdown in China, many access roads are shut down causing packages to be unable to be picked up from the factories by the shipping companies (FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc). Such is the case for the factory that produced our freebie pins for yokai members signed up for 12 months since last year. As it stands, they've been done for I think at least a month, but just sitting in the manufacturer's shipping area waiting to be picked up for around 4 weeks. My rep can't even give me a tracking number because FedEx hasn't been able to come pick up the package. :(

As for our main manu, it does seem they were able to get a few boxes out as of Tuesday and I'm watching the tracking show that the packages are moving, albeit slower than usual. These boxes will include the following designs:

• Wicked Lady remakes (at last!!)
• Human Luna remakes with correct background
• Chibi-moon (February Pretty Winker)
• Bento Yankee restock (including pastel variant)
• Cosmic Kitties restock (including pastel variant)
• Sakura ni Suzume (Cherry Blossom with Sparrow from March Mugen Club)
• Sakura (second cherry blossom design from March Mugen club)
• Naru restock
• Umino restock
• Princess Serenity (12 mo freebie, LE150, never restocking)
• Kaeru (frog) restock
• Nyango (black kitty dango) restock + tiger variant!
• Sakura ni Chouchou (sakura with butterfly, including new pink variant)

I believe that is everything unless I get a surprise pin I wasn't expecting. So needless to say, I'll be super busy grading probably starting next week, which gosh, I'm not looking forward to since I only just got all our pins on backing cards and into inventory right before we left for Boston. >_< I do enjoy tedious tasks from time to time, but I feel like I'm just doing grading and packaging nonstop these days! :o

EVENT SCHEDULE

Besides my busy weekdays coming up, we also will be busy literally every weekend of May, starting with this last day of April on Saturday! I know most of you aren't in the Seattle area, but if you are, please feel free to pop on by any of the events we're at.

C-ID Lunar New Year Celebration
April 30, 11-4pm, Seattle, WA
Free! Food & Vendors in Seattle's Chinatown

Edmonds Spring Fest
May 7, 10-5pm, Edmonds, WA
Free! Local Makers in Seattle and surrounding areas

Seattle University's Japanese Student Association: Obon Matsuri
Free! May 14, 6pm? (still waiting on details for this one)

Chibi Chibi Con
May 21, 12pm-11pm, Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA
Free! Anime-themed smaller convention in Washington's capitol

Anime Boston
May 27-29, Hynes Convention Center, Boston, MA
Not Free, Boston's largest anime convention

Tacoma Spring Fest
June 4th, 10am-5pm, Tacoma, WA
Free, local makers in Seattle and surrouding areas

Wow, that's a lot! I'm both super excited and also already feeling tired from the idea of standing on my feet so much! haha The event I'm most excited but also anxious about is the Anime Boston event because this will be our first event out of state, but also the first event where Taka and I aren't tabling together. Taka has a prior commitment to one of you lovely pin club members at the end of May, tattooing his Neo Queen Serenity design! In fact, at this time he's got three of you amazing pin club members as his clients—feel free to reach out to us anytime if you wanna come to us in Seattle for a session, would like to commission designs from Taka, or are in a city that might have a big tattoo convention.

Regarding, Anime Boston, we signed up for Anime Boston back in 2020 after my family moved to the east coast, but we were waitlisted, and then well, covid happened. About a month ago I got an email asking anyone who was on the waitlist if they were still at all interested. Of course, Taka and I already had planned our trip to Boston to see my family, so that was neither here nor there in our decision, but wouldn't you believe the day we arrived in Boston I get an email from the organizers telling us we were being offered a table! If only we knew sooner we could have planned accordingly. :o I was able to commit to the event because the costs weren't too high, and I figure even if we only break even, it's an excuse to see my family again! I was going to have my siblings attend as my assistants but they have a strict rule about not having anyone under 18 behind the tables and my siblings are only 14 & 16. I do have to be in Boston area for about 9 days because the flights closer to the con were crazy expensive (Labor Day weekend and all), so it'll be a longer trip for me again, but it's just as well because I'll get to treat my step-mom to a birthday celebration which I've been unable to do for many years, and my little sister are already planning to re-binge-watch all of Bob's Burgers and go watch it when it comes out that week!

RE: TATTOOS

As I mentioned last update, Taka was considering to work in a shop, but after some thought on the matter, he's kinda unsure again. The shop is having its opening on May 4th as that's the last day of Golden Week, so he wants to stop by and see if it gives him the right vibe and to meet the owner in person. So I'll likely have an update on that for y'all soon. Regardless of whether he decides to work at the shop or continue to be a private studio artist, his next goal is to attend more conventions around the country for his tattoo work, so that likely means we'll be traveling to cities near you more! :p

MAY PREVIEW

Ok, now that I've done this update backwards, here's a look at the May designs!

For mugen club, this design seems simple, but it still took me longer to vector than I thought it would because of all the rounded curves. It's going to be the biggest design of the Mugen club this year so far at around 2". We will likely be making a white and pink variant as well. I'm going to also see if we can do translucent enamel for the darker center area because this piece is also very inspired by the gorgeous statement pieces in art nouveau jewelry, which I believe began the enamel paint brooch trend long before pinning was a thing! When Taka and I first began our company, we actually had quite a handful of art nouveau style artwork we wanted to make more ornate jewelry of, but the main issue becomes materials (we'd want to go all out with actual precious metals, jewels, etc). Below are examples of what I'd sort of want the purples to look like as far as translucence goes.

For our Pretty Winkers, we have Saturn and Berthier up next! :) I've got the bones of the vector down already, but will show you the clean final versions with the next update!

I hope you love these two beauties! I'm in love with Saturn's design (even if it's a pain to vector that small planet in her hand! haha Berthier's background is a bit different than shown here because Taka never uses a heart template when drawing (see his wonky shaped heart for her). haha So I always have to add more or adjust with the proper heart-shape.

Anyway, that's about all for now. I'll have another update for y'all early next week! Looking forward to sharing more! Thank you all as always for your support!

- Mandy & Taka