But I’m here, and that’s the most important thing, right? I am also really closely acquainted with the Japanese healthcare system, and my medical terminology is getting way better than my casual conversation skill, especially with the help of translation apps.

I have been sketching on and off, though, and now I’m working to take those sketches and make them pixel perfect! I also came up with a great way to make easy hangers for the ones I’ve finished, and I’ll get a video of that process soon to show you how easy it is. It means I can display my finished samples and change them on a whim, which is nice to see them just hanging on the wall, knowing I made that.

On a related note, I think I’ve now figured out how to handle shipping to the US. Yes, it’ll still take a while, but now fortunately the shipping cost has been reduced. Due to the change in the JPYen to USDollar though, I’ve had to adjust the prices a bit, but while the numbers look bigger in the yen, it’s actually even more affordable for those in the EU, Canada, and US! So that’s a huge plus, right?

Expect to see more new things coming, and a hearty apology from me about the delays in everything – those of you with orders still outstanding, thank you so very much for being so understanding about all the health stuff happening, your kind words and thoughts mean a lot to me! Thank you a thousand times over for being such kind people – this community really is the best!

More to come soon, along with more videos and pictures of finished samples! Exciting!

<3 Sam

The amazing BevBee did a review on her order from me (she was my very first order other than samples for myself!) and it’s been seen by a ton of people and I now have a bunch more followers on Insta and it’s crazy! So thank you to her – she’s also been behind the scenes giving me some really great advice I hope to bring to future designs, so please, go check out her YouTube and Patreon and Instagram and say hi with a follow/subscribe!

Isn’t she the greatest?!

Because so many of you have liked my art (I am so honored, thank you to everyone who’s reached out on my facebook and insta) and getting orders, I found a huge flaw in how I have things set up.

I like to be transparent, so I’ll tell it like it is – if you’re in the US, things be expensive.

I have a company (who mainly produces for a few well known companies btw, they’re doing this for me as a favor!) who does the work of getting my charts printed, kitted up, and shipped to you! Which is awesome, as there’s no way just little disabled me could manage inventory, packing up, and shipping all of these things, even with the help of Kuroneko here in Japan. I just can’t. Spoons and all. So they do that part of the work for me.

However, they are indeed in China (the lady who runs it is Japanese though, which is how I met her company). Which means… tariffs. Yes. The dreaded tariff. And now, it’s being required to be paid on the front-end of an order, and maybe even when you receive the package, I honestly don’t know any more. But it sucks for all of us. The orders I got these past few days are a huge windfall, don’t get me wrong (we’re having a problem with our visas and all sorts of junk I don’t want to put out there, but suffice to say we’re scraping by worrying about cat food before people food), but after web hosting, fees, and all that jazz, I actually lost money on most of them.

So I was at a conundrum. Business classes I took said I should do one of the following:

• Raise prices across the board for everyone
• Add the extra cost into the products, regardless of where you’re from
• Stop shipping for free and charge shipping costs and fees
• Quit

Well, the last one isn’t something I do lightly – I’m actually hoping to eventually expand enough to open a shop here in Japan and be one of the first Diamond Painting companies here, so the longer I’m active now, the better it’ll be if I try that next step.

I hate the idea of just padding in the extra costs into the products. I know it’s just the way things are done online, but it’s not okay by me. I think it’s shady and crappy. I charge enough extra to afford to pay for my hosting, iPad, and a few treats of going out to dinner or buying a new dress every now and again, but I don’t gouge customers to begin with. It’s not in my nature, and why I’m probably a shit business person.

I also like free shipping. Like, I personally like free shipping. I know it contradicts the above, but man, living overseas makes me really annoyed when I go to order something, pay a premium already because the US dollar to Yen is terrible right now, and then get hit with shipping that is 3x the cost of the item. So, I want to always have stuff ship free if possible because frankly, it’s easier on my end too to keep track of.

So the final option was to just charge the cost on orders from the US. That way, if you’re in Germany or Canada or Japan, you don’t get hit with those added fees. And if you’re in the US, I’m sorry, there is nothing more I can do for it. I actually made sure to make them cheaper than the actual shipping/fees to save you some money (I am a master at Excel formulas to figure things out!) to get me the minimum I need to cover the order and my overhead, so you’re not getting totally screwed either. But it’s the best I can do.

If you have an order in already (or were looking at the site while I was testing it – gosh I hope no one saw the “why is it calculating like that shipping should not be $4,000?!” panic for a few minutes) I’m still filling it, no worries. I’m not gonna be all “pay me more!” because frankly I just didn’t realize it was going to be on my end, I thought it would be something collected when they delivered it to you. That was my bad. But from now on, I’m keeping a very close eye on the costs and everything and will be adjusting them down as soon as I possibly can.

I also made it so if you spend around US$145 or so (￥20,000/２万円) it’ll be free shipping because I think that’s about the threshold where it kinda evens out?

So let me know what you think about this, sorry it was so long! Here’s a picture of my cats to make up for the essay.