[reposted from our Kickstarter update of 22 Sept 2021]
Hi everyone! My apologies for not sending updates since late June. Let me catch you up!
1. At this point, all of you who asked for only decks of cards, or agreed to a swap from resin to opalite rune dice, should have had your rewards delivered. As our update title says, that’s all but 8 of you. To the eight still waiting: thank you so much for your patience, I hope to be able to reward it with backer rewards of the highest possible quality and craftsmanship.
2. I took July off of this project so I could travel to visit my family and help my widowed mother-in-law. Fully-vaccinated long-overdue hugs from moms and dad: highly recommended.
3. We (me & the teens at Ravishing Raven Handmade) are *still* having trouble with the resin dice made using sprue molds, and the two-part molds leave us with giant bubbles to fill. I’m far from confident that they’d give a random result upon rolling. We’re also having trouble making the last altar-tile/coaster, possibly something about the gemstones chosen affecting the way the resin cures. It keeps doming! We’re now trying hand-pouring it in much thinner layers to overcome this issue. Hopefully that will work and we can ship that to you soon; the other three are done and are shipping as the divination cloths are done (see no.6).
4. So, as I suggested in June, for as many of you as were interested in the swap, we engraved opalite cubes to act as rune dice, and wrote up a set of instructions for them. The hold-up here ended up being the sourcing of enough opalite that was close enough to a perfect sugar-cube shape to work properly as a die… most tumbled opalite ‘cubes’ actually aren’t. And the worldwide pandemic’s knock-on effects on supply chain management meant that took a few weeks, and three of the Canadian crystal shops on Etsy really came through by sending me the most cube-y cubes they had in stock. (I also have a huge pile of ‘seconds’ now to find another use for.) I also needed to replace my dremel – turns out a faulty motor was responsible for the vibration that was severely limiting how long I could engrave at a time. But we’re really pleased with the results, which should be in your hands by now:
5. For the handful of you who really wanted one-aett-per-D8 dice, we’ve come up with an alternative to resin: fluorite octahedrons. Again, finding ones that are close enough to a perfect octahedron to work, that are also close enough to our price point that we don’t take a bath *and* available from suppliers we trust to have ethical sourcing, is tricky. Here’s how the first set looks after hand-engraving and painting the Elder Futhark:
They also feel lovely in the hand. I hope to source enough truly-octagonal fluorite octagons to make these in place of resin for everyone who still wanted the D8 shape.
6. That leaves the batik divination cloths! Making these is very, very time-intensive, and some cloths in the first two batches made were ruined at a late stage of the process, but I’ve learned a lot and I’m partway into making the final few so I can fulfill the remaining backer rewards that included these.
7. The rune card booklet is available for free download on our website (here) and the lesson plans and rune dice instructions will follow soon.
8. Those of you who have gotten your rewards: please let me know how the cards and dice work for you! Your constructive criticism will help us improve the cards, the dice, and the instructions. We’d also LOVE to see them in use. Tag us @mannazandwyrd or use the hashtags #UrdsSnowflake #RuneCards on Instagram/twitter/tumblr.
For those who celebrate the equinox: happy Haustblot or blessed Mabon! (I *think* we’re all in the Northern Hemisphere?)
– Eira
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