First of all, happy birthday to my handsome husband who is unfortunately out of town for a conference, all alone and sad and probably about to shop his feelings.
This is the first year I haven’t been able to tag along with him for a long weekend in SF before the start of this particular conference, and it’s also the longest we’ll be apart since the first Christmas after we started dating. Is that gross? It’s gross. But it’s true! He’s going to be gone for 5 1/2 days and the last time we were separated for longer than that was Christmas 2006. Hahaha aw we’re so in luv.
Secondly, this morning is your LAST CHANCE to place an order in the shop before I put it on hiatus to work on kickstarter rewards. Any current open orders or orders placed before I close will be made & shipped on time, I just won’t be taking any new orders after today. I’m not sure how long the shop will be closed for so if you want/need a banner you should order one asap.
Finally, I have some thoughts on kickstarter I’ve kind of been sitting on until my campaign was over. Running a kickstarter campaign is weird you guys, especially once you start getting backed. You start getting tons of emails from marketers wanting you to pay them to promote your project, which in the case of a low-dollar-amount campaign like mine is ridiculous. I’m actually STILL getting these messages and my funding period is over! The other weird thing is the messages from other people running campaigns. They all want you to back their campaign $2 and promote it on your social media and they’ll back your campaign $2 and promote it on their social media. idk, this just seems kind of tacky to me? I only like to back campaigns I really believe in! I had one person send that message and then send a second message saying “I’m just going to back your campaign $2 even if you don’t back mine, good luck!” and then when their campaign was fully funded they cancelled their contribution to mine! WOW.
I also had some people message me asking how I got my campaign chosen as a staff pick, and honestly I don’t know. They probably just have quotas for staff picks in different categories to meet, and I was lucky in that my category (children’s wear, a subcategory of fashion) isn’t as crowded as some of the others. I also don’t know if being made a staff pick helped my campaign that much; most of my backers came from facebook, this blog and a couple forums I shared it in. Only $282 was pledged via kickstarter vs external sources, and $100 of that came from Taylor so it doesn’t really count. I do know that being picked/seeing my campaign on the front page certainly helped my ego, haha. No but really I’d been feeling very insecure about the chances of making my goal and it definitely gave me the boost I needed.
ANYWAY. Now that the campaign is over I have to wait two weeks to get the money (less kickstart’s percentage/processing fees, about $100) and then I can start planning my trip to the leather supply store! I’m not sure how many different hides I’m going to get, it really depends on the cost of whichever ones are the proper thickness. I’m thinking I might start with six or seven: three neutrals, two or three colours, and one metallic. WHO KNOWS, though. I also set myself a lil stretch goal where if I reached $1,200 in contributions I’d buy a custom leather stamp, and I did reach that amount so I get to order that as well.
In the meantime I’m going to be contacting everyone who selected backer rewards other than shoes (which I can’t start making until I get the money & the leather) to get their addresses & requests (for custom items). I also need to make a size chart for when I do start making thew shoes. And patterns for all the different sizes! Ugh I have so much to do, wahhh*
*not really