REGRETSY’S BIG BOOK OF FABRICATED FOLKTALES FROM FINLAND

As you know, we are in the home stretch on our Kickstarter project. It’s been very exciting, and with a little over three days to go, we are 108% funded!

I just want to say how grateful I am to everyone who has supported this project. It’s a good paying job for a lot of artists in the community, and it’s also going to enable me to fly to Finland, meet some fans and document the insanity.

And beyond that, it’s going to let us make a sizable contribution to our emergency charity fund, which has been very helpful for a lot of Etsy sellers in need.

The money in this fund comes from Zazzle sales, donated book royalties and ad revenue, and projects like this one.

In recent months, we have bought over $3,000 worth of merchandise to use as prizes in our contests, restored utilities and phone service and covered vet bills. We even bought a new bed for a little girl who didn’t have a place of her own to sleep after a sudden change in her family’s circumstances. It’s a good fund, and I’m proud of what we do with it.

Now that we’ve made our goal on Kickstarter, any additional profits from this drive will go directly to this fund. So I’m going to make one last reward available, and maybe we can go out with a bang.

Yesterday, I exchanged emails with Robery Marbury (the Etsy seller who did the Brooklyn Merit Badges). He has been overwhelmed with sales and emails, and he is so grateful. He just moved to Baltimore, so this was a great welcome and has really helped him get started in his new city. He even changed his store announcement to thank all of his new Regretsy customers!

I somehow managed to talk him into doing a special limited edition merit badge for our Kickstarter project. I know, right? I have a gift for harassment.

This merit badge will be the last reward I offer before the funding ends on this Sunday, September 25.

Are you ready?

Isn’t that amazing? A dazzling display of ignorance, coupled with a colorful Finnish swear word. I’m going to sew one of my coat and see how long it takes me to get into a fight in Helsinki.

This limited edition badge will be available starting right now on Kickstarter. It will come with a printed edition of the book, a signed thank you card and a worthless bonus item.

PERKELE!

You may find this hard to believe, but I was young once. And I was very involved in theatre and doing plays and being an actress and all of that horse shit. And if there is one fundamental truth to this part of your life, it is this:

You need pictures.

So when one of your idiot friends calls you up and says, hey, we’re going to dress like fucking clowns and traipse around the hills all day, are you in? You say, shit yeah I’m in.

I need pictures.

So you show up to the “set”, which is actually the base of a hiking trail, where the “amazing make-up artist” breaks out a couple of lawn chairs and a Rubbermaid tub full of expired foundation. And then “wardrobe” shows up in his 1982 hearse with a trunk full of moth eaten shit he stole from the costume department of his old high school, and IT’S SCAVULLO TIME

And there you are, sweating under layers of clothes that already smell like B.O., while they smoke American Spirits and talk about the “Golden Hour” and other shit they heard someone talk about on the Actors Studio. And suddenly someone says, you know what this needs? Bowler hats and knee pads. And then the other guy with the red highlights says yes, but only one knee pad each. And that’s when it all clicks, and later, when you’re sharing a sad, skinny joint in the parking lot, everyone says oh my god you guys we got some amazing stuff today.

And if by some chance you actually manage to get a meeting with an agent, and you break out your portfolio, they will take one look at this New Wave Hillbilly Clownfuck and say,

You need pictures.