Celestial Insects

Quick update for everyone!

So far it looks like 78% of you have already filled out and submitted your surveys. If you haven't received your survey, lost the link, or never saw the email with it, please let me know. I can re-send your surveys if you need it!
I want to have all surveys completed by next Friday (March 7th) so I can finalize counts and look at how much I need to order.

Failed payments
There are still 8 of you with failed payments. If that's you- don't worry! You will still receive a survey and have one more chance to fix your payment info and get the items you pledged for.

Please fill our your survey to fix your payment so you can still get your pins and stickers!

Pink Butterfly Variant
There is one more chance to unlock a bonus pin design! I need just a couple more folks to add the 'Pink Butterfly Nebula' pin to their order to unlock the pink/ blue version of the Butterfly Nebula pin. The pink sticker version of this design has been VERY popular, so I wanted to give you guys the opportunity to fund a pin version of it to mirror the orange one!

Need to change your order? You will be able to update your address right up until I'm ready to ship orders. 

Want to add things to your order? You can edit your survey answers and add-ons any time by going to your profile, selecting "Your Pledges and Surveys", selecting the Celestial Insects tab, and going to the survey.

That's all for now! Thank you everyone who added bonus items to their orders!

Hi everyone!
It seems like most of you have seen them already, but surveys are out! If you didn't see the email or lost it, please let me know and I can re-send your survey link so you can pick your pins :)

There are still 8 people with failed payments. If you think this might be you or just want to double check, please let me know via email, DM, or comment and I can check your status.
You can also check this yourself by going to your profile and clicking on "Your Pledges and Surveys"

Small color update for everyone- I decided to update the colors for the Red and Blue Space Cutter Ants to make them more, well, red and blue! I've been looking at colors with my manufacturer and seeing these three pins together, I realized I wanted the colors to be more saturated and distinct from one another. This mainly effects the boldness and cohesiveness of the Blue Space Cutter Ant, and makes the Red Space Cutter Ant more red/ orange instead of orange/ yellow, and creates more distinction between it and the yellow one.



Speaking of the Ants, if you pledged for the 4, 5, or 6 pin bundles and wanted one or more of the ant pins, please let me know. I omitted them from these bundles because they are smaller than the other pins in the campaign (1.75 inch instead of 2 inch) and I thought people would only want to buy them in the set or as an add-on. Unfortunately I can no longer change this, but these pins are available in the Add-On section of the survey. I can manually change your pledge to the Ant Set of 3 (one of each color) and add any other pins to your order, or you can DM or email me and I can add a note to your pledge to send you these instead.

Next- There is a new pin to fund!
After seeing just how many of you were interested in the Pink Butterfly Nebula Sticker, I decided to finally add it to the campaign! This is a re-colored version of the original Butterfly Nebula pin, just with pink, blue, and purple sections instead of yellow, turquoise, and orange. These will be the same size as the Orange Version, and will also feature gold plating, 2 pin posts, and a hard enamel finish. If you would like this color way of the Butterfly Nebula Pin, you can now add it to your order via the Add-On section of the survey.



Already submitted your survey but want to add this to your order? Just go to your profile and select "Your Pledges and Surveys" and click on the Celestial Insects page and it will take you back to your survey. You should be able to edit this at any time before orders are locked, in case you want to make any changes :)
Added the original version to your pledge and want to switch? Let me know and I can add a note to your order!

Shipping Cost Update

There seems to have been an issue with multiple shipping profiles being added to people's orders, which caused the price to jump up (especially with international orders), but this has now been fixed!
Some of you may notice that you will be charged less than anticipated- but don't worry! This is just the adjustment in shipping costs and all your add-ons will still be there :)

Most Popular Item?
For anyone curious, the most popular items so far are as follows:

1. The Galactic Bee Sticker
2. Sun Beetle (with 10 more sales than the Moon Beetle!!)
3. Pink Butterfly Sticker
4. White/Pastel World Eater Spider pin
5. Moon Beetle
6/7. Butterfly Nebula pin and Constellation Moth pin (tied)
8. Nova Scorpion pin
9. Black Scorpion pin
10. Original (blue) World Eater Spider

As always, please feel free to ask questions here in the comments or via DM on here or on my instagram, ApothecaryOctopus

Great news everyone! Surveys are done and approved, and you are one step closer to getting your rewards :)
First things first, there are still 9 backers who have failed payments. Please double check your pledge and ensure your payment has gone through so you can receive your pins. Let me know if you have questions about how to do this, or if you want to make sure your card got processed so I can check.

What's next?
Right now, I am sending out a 'smoke test' survey to about 5% of backers, to ensure the survey works and is running smoothly. After that, I can send the survey out to everyone else! Once all the surveys have been filled out, I can get the final item counts for the manufacturer and get these pins in production!

Campaign Freebies
As a reminder, I have several bonus items that you can receive for FREE with your order!

ALL backers will receive their choice of free sticker to go with their pledge. Designs include the Galactic Bee (the original freebie sticker), Pink or Orange Butterfly Nebula, and Galaxy Snail. You will be able to choose your freebie sticker through the survey. If you want more than one, you can always add more stickers to your order through the add-on section.

Anyone who backed the project for 5 or more pins will also have the option to choose a BONUS sticker sheet! This will be added to your order in addition to the free sticker.
If you pledged for fewer pins but added on more in the survey or during the campaign (totaling 5 or more) you will ALSO receive a free sticker sheet, though this one will be randomly chosen :)

If you also backed my partner project Howl & Harmony, you will receive TWO free keychains! These will come together with magnets to form one complete design. Angel (yellow and white) half was designed by me and and will be shipped with your pledge from my campaign. The Demon (grey and purple) half will ship with your order from their campaign.

Minor design changes

I have made some small changes to a couple of designs for manufacturing. Namely the "Space Minis" and "Ant Set" sticker sheets have been changed slightly because some of the stickers were too close together. The Space Minis sheet (shown above) has more noticeable changes so I wanted to show you the new layout, but the ant stickers have just been moved slightly farther apart and the change isn't very noticeable unless you had a ruler to measure.

The colors for the Sun Beetle pin and Nova Scorpion have also been altered slightly. The Nova Scorpion has been changed from a black body to a very deep burgundy color so there's more distinction between it and the Black Hole Scorpion design, but like the Ant Set sticker sheet, the change won't be very noticeable.
I altered the colors of the Sun Beetle design slightly to make the colors more cohesive with each other. The yellows are all now a similar shade or yellow/ orange, and the blues are richer to go with the bolder yellow. I think the colors pop more with this pallet, but I wanted to give you a heads up in case this effects which pin designs you want to select in your survey.

tldr; Double check that your payment went through, and keep an eye out for your surveys!

As always please let me know if you have questions! I try to answer them as best as I can and as soon as I see them :)

Important update regarding surveys and declined cards!

First the good news- surveys are almost done! I just need to have them reviewed and approved, then there will be a smoke test where about 5% of backers will receive their survey early to make sure it's running correctly and to iron out any issues, then everyone else will get them! Keep an eye on your email for the survey :)

Now for the bad news- about 17 of you had your cards decline. If this is you, PLEASE update your card and re-submit! If you aren't sure your payment went through, please search your email for a message from BackerKit from between February 13th and 15th, OR check your BackerKit account to see if your pledge went through.

If your payment did not go through and it isn't updated by next week, you may be dropped from the campaign
Please double check your payment info! You can do this by going to your profile, selecting 'Your pledges and surveys', and click on the Celestial Insects campaign. If you backed multiple projects, chances are that if one failed, all of them might have failed, so please check on all of them!

If you are dropped from the campaign, you will still be able to pre-order whichever pins, keychains and stickers you want through the pre-order store!

The Pre-Order store is now open! Anyone who missed the campaign can pre-order their favorite items here

Survey and Item updates:
The surveys are almost done! There are over a dozen things you can add to your order, including 4 sticker designs, 5 keychains, all 14(!!) pin designs unlocked during the campaign, and a few bonus items~

I also decided to change the freebie sticker- now you'll have an option to choose which sticker design you want! There are four options, Galactic Bee, Orange Butterfly Nebula, Pink Butterfly Nebula, and Galaxy Snail. ALL backers will get the option to choose this freebie sticker! And don't worry if you can't pick just one- there will be an option to add more stickers (and pins!) to your order after you choose your pledge items :)

I have designed and added a 4th sticker sheet to the campaign, this one has slightly smaller stickers but with more of them! The current sticker sheet options to choose from are as follows:

Also included in the survey are some extras from my previous pin campaign! They're Halloween themed bug pins, but knowing you guys you'll love them even if they're out of season :) These pins will be $10 for the 1.5 inch ones and just $7 for the mini 1 inch pins; normally $10-13 in my shop, add some of these to your order for a discount (and help me make room for the new ones)!


As well as these options, there is now an add-on for the full set of 14 pins (plus two random sticker sheets as a bonus!), a full set of gold foil keychains (3), and a full set of stickers (all 4 individual stickers, and all 4 sheets). Each of these sets is slightly discounted to encourage buying full sets!

Questions? Please let me know! I do keep an eye on my Instagram DM's and comments posted here so don't hesitate to reach out :)

Dawn of the Final Day!

With just 15(ish) hours left, I wanted to give a big THANK YOU to all 138 of you!! This is by far my largest campaign EVER with more than DOUBLE the amount raised as any of my previous campaigns (even TRIPPLE the amount raised as my first ever campaign!)

Because of your amazing support, we have unlocked ALL stretch goals! You'll have the option to choose ANY of the pins/ stickers/ keychains seen in the campaign in the reward survey!

The long-awaited Constellation Moth is now available as a reward! You'll be able to choose this pin option in the survey or add it on through the pre-order store.
The Atlas Beetle 2-part keychain pledge level and add-on have been edited to be for either 2-part keychain, and you will be able to choose which design you want in the survey.

So What's Next?
With just a few hours to go, please remember to keep an eye on your email for notices from BackerKit to make sure your payment went through. More than likely, you won't see one if your payment is processed correctly, but if there's an error in your card you'll have about a week to update your payment info before you are dropped from the campaign. If this happens to you and you want to re-join, please email or message me and I will send you a link to the pre-order store so you can still get your pins/ stickers/ keychains

Surveys
Once the campaign is over, I will be working hard on getting your surveys set up and ready to go so you can pick your rewards as soon as I get the go-ahead from BackerKit. This usually takes 1-2 weeks, though with the huge volume of orders and campaigns going on through PinTopia 2025, I imagine it might take a little longer. Keep an eye on your email in the next 2 weeks for updates and survey links from me and any other creators you backed in this event!

Cross-Colab Freebies
Speaking of other creators, have you checked out LivingBiohazard's campaign yet? If you back both of our campaigns for $12 or more, you will get a special edition 2-part keychain, with one half designed by each of us! Their project ends the same time mine does, so if you haven't backed it yet, time's running out!

That should be it for this update!
Seriously guys, I'm really blown away by the overwhelming support on this project! I can't wait to get these pins made and in your hands :)