From The Messy Desk of Rebecca - Collectable Apologies

Hello! I have another print update for you all!

As much as I had hoped that I could hit the ground running when handed my new responsibility of -everything- to do with the prints, unfortunately there were a few lingering jobs and issues that needed sorting first. These are now done, and will not affect anything going forward meaning that I am now fully in control of the situation and any problems and issues you have from this point forward can be easily blamed on me - Hooray!

As much as you may feel like this isn't a good thing, I personally feel that it is. You can contact me directly with any issues and you know you’re getting the most useful and accurate response possible because your issue goes, essentially, straight to head office. With any issues going forward I hope that I will be able to provide a very transparent answer and while you might not always love it, I hope you can at least feel satisfied with it.

Now, on to what you’re here for.

You should have (hopefully) now received your last set of prints shipped by Matt. If they’re not with you yet, don’t worry - Christmas post is always a nightmare, they’re more likely to be delayed and often get temporarily lost. If you messaged me to inform me that your address has changed, this information was passed on to Matt, and Matt has used up to date addresses that we have for you (not the address from the month you paid in). I would like to kindly ask that you wait a little longer than you usually would this month before reporting potentially missing prints, just because of the time of the year - but don’t worry we have enough replacements to fix any issues!

Upcoming prints! I hope (and plan) to ship two sets of prints each month, and if possible I will be aiming to ship three during some months to catch up quicker. This will not be possible in January due to pressing life issues and time constraints, but I will be doing my absolute best to get two sets of prints on their way to you this month. I would like to see how this goes this month before making plans for any subsequent months, but I am determined to catch up as soon as we possibly can. Any updates will be posted on our public Patreon Print Trello (https://trello.com/b/pioevusa/patreon-prints-database) so please feel free to check that, and, as always, please feel free to ask me any questions.

The next set of prints have been sitting in our house for months now. I didn’t want to ship them before Matt shipped the ones he had at his house to avoid any confusion, and then Christmas post chaos meant that I decided that shipping during January made more sense than shipping during Christmas week. When they originally arrived I was not happy with how one of them turned out but fixing this issue (which was ultimately my fault) was out of my control. However now it is not (:D) and so I have decided to reprint them. They are on their way to us currently and as soon as they arrive they will be packed up and shipped off to you. (Due to weight limits on flat mail I am unsure if I can include the misprints in with the re-prints but if I can, I will!).

Art prints for the following three months have also been completed and have been ordered and one of these should also be on its way to you before the end of the month (fingers crossed). This then gives me a month to get everything ready for the second set of prints that should hopefully be getting shipped in February.

Now on to something a little bit exciting! We’ve been brainstorming because I’m just not happy with how long this delay on the prints has been, and on top of that you’ve all been so incredibly kind to us in regards to this situation that I really wanted to do something more as an apology and to show our appreciation. I’ve had many ideas but unfortunately my creative output is currently limited, as are our funds and we do have an especially large workload to balance as well. The last thing I wanted to do is offer an extra to apologise for delays that then goes on to cause longer delays in the future! However I think I’ve come up with the perfect thing (and I hope you all agree because I’ve already made them!). For every print we ship behind schedule (during this time and if there are any delays in the future - although I certainly hope there won’t be any more delayed prints once we catch up!!) we will be including a small collectable/trading card featuring art of one of us (and by one of us I mean our animals mainly because I can’t help myself). I love drawing them in a chunky art style with a limited colour palette, and no matter how burnt out I get, I continue to draw them on anything I can get my hands on. They will be business card size which means they’re very affordable on our end and weigh very little (not affecting the weight of the letter mail). By making them an item that you build up a collection of I hope that also means that it might somewhat combat the frustration of us being so incredibly behind on the prints by adding in something that you can collect every time we fail to ship in the month we said we would. It offers you a physical acknowledgement of the delay, and honestly I hope you like them so much that you not only don’t mind future delays, but some of you might actively hope for them! So far we have a list of 32(!!!) potential cards and a good chunk of them are designed and being printed as we speak. I’m really happy with how these turned out and I feel very confident that they are a consistently achievable show of our appreciation. I hope you’re excited for your collectable apologies!

I think that’s pretty much everything from me for now, please feel free to let me know any concerns or questions you have, and I will definitely read them and do my very best to reply to any of the public ones (I’m getting better but I’m not great - I’m working on it!).

I hope you all had a wonderful end of December and start to the new year - I truly hope this is your best year yet.

- Rebecca :)