Queer Fantasy Pride Collection

Good morning folks,

I have some bad news. While packing orders last night, I noticed one of the Rainbow Dragon pins had miscolored toes, and when I went to grab a replacement, I saw that the second one I picked also had the wrong color toes! I ended up checking a large handful of them only to find that every one I checked had this issue. I have already reached out to the manufacturer for remakes, but even if they offer to remake all of them, it will be 3-5 weeks before they even get to me.


I believe what happened is that one of my friends who helped me quality check these pins missed this issue, since it is so small! Ultimately, I should have checked all designs myself (or checked a random sample of each design), but since I didn't, I would like to sincerely apologize to anyone who may have already received one of these miscolored dragons.

What Happens Now

For anyone who ordered the dragon pin, I will be holding off on shipping your order until the remakes come in. Alternatively, if you are OK with getting one of these pins with white toes, please let me know! You can send me a message on Instagram (apothecaryoctopus), leave a comment on this update, or email me at [email protected]
This flaw is very minor, so if you don't mind receiving one of these, I can send your order out early! Please let me know if this works for you, and if you opt into getting one of these pins, I will add a random bonus sticker from my regular shop to your order for free :)

If you would prefer to wait for the re-made pins to come in, you don't have to do anything. I will assume anyone who does not reach out to me would prefer to wait the 3-5 weeks for the new pins to come in. I will continue to post updates when they ship and when I can resume shipping orders with this design!

I really wish I had better news to share, especially with my new project launching next week. I have already packed and shipped several orders, with many more (now just ones without Dragon pins) being packed this weekend. Thank you all for your patience while I slowly chip away at these!

If you are interested in my Magic University Pin Collection, check it out here --> Cryptic Grove, Magic University and get notified on launch! This project will focus on Magical Majors, with each mini collection featuring 3 hard enamel pins and bonus sticker. This will be part of the Coven of Shadows group project with 6 other artists, so be sure to check out all the projects for group colab bonuses!

Good morning folks!
I have some great news-
First, the magnets are here! I have one of each of them on my fridge now and I'm 'product testing' one of them now by putting it on my car ;)
I did end up making them slightly bigger- 7x3" instead of 6x3"- so the designs have been adjusted slightly.

Next:
The backer cards and last of the packaging I need has arrived as well, so I can finally start packing your orders!
I really struggled with the design for this one, but I ended up going with an Illuminated Manuscript-inspired design. There are two sizes of cards, a small and a large. The small cards fit one large pin (creatures and pronoun pins) or 2-3 mini pins (flag banners), but if you ordered 3 or more large pins, I will put them all on the larger card to save paper :) The larger card is the same design, just 4x6" instead of 3" square, and can hold 3 to 6 large pins with a few smaller ones in between.

You should have received an email last night/ this morning about orders locking. This allows 48 hours to change or update the address you have on file if you've moved or need to make any changes. If you don't need to update, you can ignore that message!

Also:
I still have a few failed payments and incomplete surveys. I have sent quite a few reminders to those folks, but if you don't fill out your survey or if your payment doesn't go through, I can't send your rewards. If you aren't sure if you filled out the survey or think your payment failed, please either leave a comment, message me on Instagram, or check on your order by going to your profile, then "Your Pledges and Surveys", then find this campaign. Failed payments can be from insufficient funds or from expired cards, so if you had to replace your credit/debit card recently, please double-check your order!
If you need any help or want me to re-send the survey link, please let me know :)

Once I'm about halfway through packing orders, I will delete/ remove these pledges from the campaign.

Last:
I will start diligently working on packing your orders as soon as I can, but please keep in mind that I am just one person who also has a 9 to 5. I can usually pack a dozen or more orders on weekdays and 60+ orders on weekends, but with almost 230 orders in this campaign, it will still take a while!
Domestic orders (inside the US) should get tracking numbers when I buy the label, and international orders will not. Shipping notifications will be sent when I buy the label, but I usually don't go to the post office every day so it may take an additional 2-4 days before the tracking number updates. 

Thank you all for your patience! It's been so fun to see this whole project come to live and I can't wait for you all to see the end result!

-Danny
ApothecaryOctopus

Hi everyone!!
I have some very exciting news- not only did all the stickers arrive on Tuesday, but the keychains and pins (and two other orders I placed for a fall update in my regular shop) ALL arrived on Thursday!
I had been planning on posting an update for the stickers on Thursday/Friday, but when I saw that the pins were out for delivery I decided to delay it a bit so I could show you everything at once :)

First- a special shout-out to my friends Rylee, Athena, and Maja for coming over to help me count, sort, and quality check everything! Rylee and I managed to get all the stickers done in record time, and Athena, Maja, and I got almost all of the pins done over the weekend. I still have a couple designs to finish up, but I do have some behind-the-scenes photos to share!

Stickers
The stickers look great! The creature stickers with the flags did end up being slightly smaller than I wanted, 2.8-2.9 inches wide rather than 3 inches, but they're still a good size for every-day use :) The larger 4" stickers ended up being much closer to 5 inches wide, which ended up being the perfect size in my opinion.

Pins
Counting, sorting, and quality checking the pins was quite an undertaking! It took me and two friends most of the weekend to get as far as we did, and there's still about 400 pins or so left to go through. After that, I'll take better photos of each design, and more importantly, get to packing your orders! In the meantime, here's some pics of the pins as we took as we went through them :)

Remaining Items in Production
There are just a couple more things in production that I'm waiting on before I can start packing orders. The Car magnets went into production a couple of days ago, though they are only going to take about a week to make and ship to me. I am also waiting on more bubble mailers and some sleeves to put the stickers in, but once those are in there will only be one more thing to make- the backer cards!
If you were part of my previous Celestial Insects campaign, you might remember that I designed special backer cards in two sizes to put your pins on to make the unboxing experience more special and memorable. I've been going back and forth on the designs for these, but I think I finally have an idea that I like and will be ordering them in the next couple of days. Once they're in, its Shipping Time!



Timeline
This may sound like a lot, but I will still be able to start shipping orders by the end of September! I'll be posting another update when the last items arrive and when I officially start sending packages out. You should get an email from BackerKit when I buy the postage label for your order, but it may take a few days for the tracking number to update as I usually buy labels in bulk then take a couple days to pack a bunch of them before I drop off a batch at the post office.

As always, if you have any questions you are more than welcome to comment them here or send me a message on Instagram! I'll try to be better about posting updates in the next couple weeks, but I am usually much better at responding to DM's if you have an urgent need :)

Good evening!
A couple of announcements today~
First, I got more photos of all the pins! Again you'll have to excuse the lighting on these since they were taken in warehouse lighting which tends to throw the colors off a bit, but they all look great! These have already shipped, but I don't expect them to arrive before the 12th of September or so.

The stickers and keychains are on their way and should be arriving in the next week or two. Once those come in, I'll need to count, sort, and quality check everything, but I'll do my best to update you all with photos! Once the pins have arrived, I'll start packing orders and hopefully all US backers will have their items by the end of October, with international backers' orders arriving a little later in early November. If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know! <3

And for the other BIG news~
I'm launching another campaign!
I've been on a roll with these, and I'm keeping the creative momentum rolling by working on it one while we wait for all the items from this campaign to come in.
This next campaign is inspired by dark academia and magic schools, and it's launching just in time for both spooky season and back to school!
In this campaign, you have been invited to join the 2025-26 school year at Cryptic Grove, a Sorcerer University! You'll choose your major, gather your school supplies, and maybe even summon a familiar to accompany you on your magical adventures. Each 'major' will come with two 2" enamel pins: themed spell/textbook and 'project' pin, as well as a mini 1" pin and 3" sticker unique to your chosen major. I've been having a lot of fun planning this one, and I hope to see you on launch day!



This campaign will launch on October 1st, but you can check out the teaser page for Cryptic Grove here!
Because you backed this campaign, you're eligible for a free bonus reward- an Honor Student sticker! And, just like in this campaign, if you back Cryptic Grove in the first 48 hours you'll also get another free bonus sticker.

Good morning!
Great news- not only did I finally get some pictures from the manufacturer of the enamel pins, but the Lanyards have finally arrived!

Pin Photos:

These photos are from the manufacturer's warehouse, so they don't have the best lighting. I have asked for more pics and for some in better lighting so hopefully I can show them off in the next update :)

Lanyards Photos:

I took some photos of all of them before I counted all of them so please excuse the lighting on the first two images, I wanted to make sure I could show you as soon as possible before taking better pics with nicer lighting :)

The vast majority of the stickers shipped last week and should hopefully be in my hands around Tuesday, so expect another update soon with those pics! There were abut 1,500 stickers in that batch, so it might take a little while to count and sort everything- but luckily I have several friends who have offered to help with this when the stickers and pins finally get here.

The keychains and pins are still in production, but hopefully we will be seeing those come in soon :)

That's all for now! For the next couple of weeks there should be some more frequent updates with more photos and shipping info, but as always please feel free to message me on Instagram or comment on this update.