shop stuff!! & patron early access time

Hello my dears from Shop Brain Land! A place I've not visited in ages -- it is very surreal but also very fun to be back here hehe. I've redone my entire website and am currently in the process of adding my new listings and getting my photos edited. I had a meeting with my bookkeeper yesterday (hi Brenna!!!) to make sure that all my inventory is in order, and Marian has been a real champ helping me count and recount stuff and package up all my new stationery and sticker bundles.

So much of doing shop updates is hours and hours of weird admin minutiae -- adding products to different categories, taking new product photos, adjusting shipping profiles, counting inventory, etc. I forgot how many tiny little tasks make up shop building, but I've been handling them quite well having not been in this realm for so long. I'm quite proud of myself >:3

PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY

I broke out my trusty white poster boards yesterday for product photography, and it really threw me back to 2021, and even before -- this has been my product photog set-up since day one practically. It's very cheap, and makes for really even lighting, so it makes editing the photos very simple since I don't have to really pull up or even out any shadows, I just get to brighten the whole thing and punch up the colors!! I included a side by side to show how it looks straight from camera vs. after editing it in Lightroom. The difference is d r a s t i c, lol. When it comes to photos like this, it's ALWAYS better to shoot darker than you think you need to, so you have all that data to work with. You can always brighten a photo and bring those darker details up, but if your shot is overexposed in any spots, that data is lost and it'll be reealllll hard to bring those blown out spots back down.

SHIPPING STUFF

Squarespace has finally added fulfillment profiles to their shipping options, so making sure that people are forced to choose tracked shipping at checkout if they order any clearance stuff is so so easy now. I'm not going to be able to replace any orders this time around, so any shipping insurance I can get I am going to take. I spent this morning looking at shipping rates, and the cheapest tracked international shipping rate I can offer is $20 USD ToT it's SO steep, and I really wish that I could offer cheaper prices...It'll either be $20 for tracked orders, or $4 for sticker mail, which will be available if you only get the individual die-cut stickers from the Patreon half of the store.

I still love using Squarespace (my ad reads for them are always genuine, I wouldn't work with them so often if I didn't like them), but I do wish their commerce tools were a little...neater? Sleeker? They don't even offer Shop Pay at checkout, which I think is a real shame, as it makes buying stuff online via mobile infinitely quicker and easier. If I do open up my online shop again come spring time, I think I'm going to move my shop portion to Shopify, and keep my portfolio and about deets on Squarespace. (and if I ever do wholesale, I'll keep that on Squarespace too, to keep the two super separate)

MERCH DETAILS

I've made all the stuff that used to be in the Patreon secret shop publicly available for this update! It's going to be the postcards and stickers from my art mail tiers up through June 2023's rewards. I'm going to be deep in rehearsals this winter, but I do plan on getting my secret shop back up and running in the spring, so I'll be able to add this fall's rewards to that so y'all can get your hands on 'em.

As far as other products, I will have (these prices may be subject to change but these are pretty solid):

• sticker sheet grab bags -- $12 (4 random sticker sheets)
• vinyl sticker grab bags -- $10 (5 random vinyl stickers)
• large floral sheets bundles -- $8 (3 of my large floral sticker sheets)
• cozy stationery sets -- $12 (I know it's not a major discount from the original price of $14, but you get twice as many pages & 2 sticker sheets instead of 1!)
• notepad sets -- $8 for the small ones, and $10 for the fika notepads (these will come in sets of two)
• notebook sets -- these come in sets of 3, and it'll be $12 for the small, and $15 for the bigger ones
• sweater gal sticker pack -- $5
• a variety of old prints -- these range from $5-$7; some of them I only have 1-3 left in stock!!
• all the stickers and prints from the patreon shop, with stickers being $3 and prints being $4

When I say "random", I mean that the items in the bundles have been randomly chosen from my entire past catalogue of products. Some will contain duplicates, some will have all unique items -- that's the beauty of a grab bag, eh? As far as prices go, I tried to find a line between still turning a profit on these items from years ago but also making them cheap enough where they get out of my house (at last) and into your sweet, wonderful hands.

I'm actually thinking about re-doing the vinyl sticker grab bags, and making them packs of 3 instead of 5...that way I'll be able to offer more of them, and offer them for cheaper, as I currently have roughly only 100 grab bags for the vinyl stickers. What do y'all think?

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SHOP OPENING DEETS!!

So, the shop will be opening this Friday, September 22!! It'll be open at 11am PST for patrons (I'll have a scheduled post that goes live then that includes the password to the site), and then it'll open to the public at 3pm PST. I decided to do a slightly later launch so I can give myself a decent buffer in the morning to finish up any last tidbits.

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AAAAAAHHHHHHH I hope y'all are excited!!!! I am very nervous and also thrilled!!!! I'm just hoping things sell well and that nothing goes terribly awry lmao. I also have a Squarespace sponsored video that I'm editing in the midst of all this...that'll get done, somehow someway lol. LOVE YOU LOTS CAN'T WAIT FOR Y'ALL TO SEE THE NEW SITE IN FULL MWAH MWAH