Wednesday, October 30, 2013

The Decks Are In!

Yesterday I received a huge 750lb delivery of a whole bunch of Storyteller Cards decks. And this means... it's time to start shipping these cards out! Over the next few weeks, I'll be spending some late nights packing up your rewards and shipping them out each day. I'm planning to send out 30-50 per day and have everything out within the first 2 weeks of November.

The cards turned out perfect and I couldn't be more excited. Even after lugging about 30 boxes down the stairs, I was thrilled just sitting there and staring at them. I probably would have passed out if I tried to move... but still! It's a super exciting time. I can't wait for these to get to you.

Here are a few pictures of the decks, the cards, and my workspace right now.


 
 
 
 
If anyone is at Metatopia this weekend in New Jersey, I'll have a deck or two on hand to show off, and I can even bring some to deliver to backers in person. Just let me know if you'll be there and we'll make arrangements. I'm doing a few panels on Saturday, including one about "Lessons Learned from Self Publishing", which includes everything I've learned from this campaign and others. My panel schedule is right here: http://buttonshy.blogspot.com/2013/10/my-metatopia-2013-panel-schedule.html

And finally, Campbell Whyte sent me an image for a super secret project that we're working on. But since I'm in the mood to give away some secrets, I'll share it below. Enjoy!


 

Monday, October 14, 2013

Help Storyteller Cards Artist Campbell Whyte

My good friend and Storyteller Cards artist Campbell Whyte has been doing a bit of travel over the last few months with his family. They spent time in Italy, Mexico and the United States picking up and creating things the entire way. Until last week in San Francisco when somebody stole all of their luggage.

Here is the story in Campbell's words. An open letter "to the person who took our luggage".

Hi there, we’re not sure who you are, but we’re pretty sure you know us. You probably know us really well actually, as you recently stole all of our luggage while we were on holiday. Every. Single. Thing.

Well, that’s not fair, you did leave us with one salt and pepper shaker that was a gift, my 5 year old sons sandals and a 2014 Italian priests calendar. Those priests were pretty good looking, we’re baffled that you would pass them up.

Anyway, we hope you’re well. Really, we do. We hope that our loss has provided you with your essentials for a while, food, shelter, warmth, security. Although I’ve never been in your position before, where I rely on stealing from others to make ends meet, I imagine it is not an easy life. I imagine you probably live in fear a lot of the time, fear of the culture you find yourself in, fear of the government, police, other people stealing from you. You must also look out at tourists like us with a great degree of resentment. Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco is filled to the brim of snap happy, money dropping, grinning ear to ear vacationers.

To you, we must appear as the 1%, rolling in wealth and decadence. Although you might not believe it, this is really not the case with us. We are a small family from Australia. Myself, fiance, and our five year old son. For the past 6 years we have been saving money for our vacation. Working full time, doing extra jobs on the weekend. Making money where we can from our arts practices. What you took from us that day, were pretty much all of our possessions.
 
Read the rest at: http://www.campbellwhyte.com/uncategorized/to-the-person-who-took-our-luggage/  
I want to help Campbell out in any and every way possible, so the first thing I want to do is spread the word. I have no clue if their personal belongings can be found and returned, but I would like to hope so. If you have any way to share his story, or if you know of a great place to share it, please do.

One of the things that I want to do to help Campbell is to auction off a piece of his original Storyteller Cards art. I'm also going to include a deck of Storyteller Cards and one of each of the 3 Storyteller Kits we offered during the Kickstarter Campaign. The proceeds will go 100% to him and his family. I will cover the shipping and all the other fees and nonsense, so that a penny isn't missed.

The piece of art that I chose is very fitting, it's the Criminal card. It's a criminal escaping on a toy truck... probably Campbell's son's toy truck. :(


Here is the original art:


Here is the final card:
 And here it is in a sweet frame:


It's a great card in the Storyteller Cards deck that leads to tons of stories, just like Campbell's.