USPS postage changes

It appears that the USPS is changing the way International First Class mail is being handled, and I'll no longer be able to ship Patreon and Etsy packages Internationally on the cheap. 

http://blog.stamps.com/2017/12/26/important-usps-making-changes-first-class-mail-international-flats/

This puts a huge dampening on my mail tiers, so I'm trying to think of a couple options to keep it "cheap". 

Currently, I eat the additional costs of international mail on my print/sticker tier, its about $1.50 extra than the domestic mail. I should still be able to send prints and stickers the same way (and just.. mark it as a personal correspondence on the form :P)

However, for my new pin club tier, I'll have to change the way I handle the charges for that since there's no way I can sneak a pin past. For the past several months I've been able to send small items such as pins and keychains as "large envelopes" as long as they were under 3/4ths of an inch in thickness. This change removes that, and they'll only allow documents to be sent under this mail class, nothing that can be considered merchandise. :(

The packages I send out will generally be under 6 ounces, but you can see the massive cost increase between the tiers. I'll most likely be losing a lot of international sales on Etsy because of this price increase. (No one really wants to buy a $10 item and pay another $10 in shipping!)

NOTE: This ONLY effects the new Pin club tier - Sticker/Prints and the Patreon Box will be handled the same way as before.

Option 1) Add an additional $6 to your pledge to cover the pin club tier. ($18 total)

Option 2) Add an additional $3 to your pledge, and I'll ship out your pins on a bi-monthly basis. ($15 total)

For those of you that might consider switching to the pin club and are international, please tell me what you think. :)

On a related note, prices in general for USPS will be changing on Jan 21st - most things are only a few cents higher. This shouldn't affect me too much, I think an 8oz package is going up by about 40-50 cents. 

____________________________________

Anyway!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Holiday and have a Happy New Year! I should have some new art to post very soon, as well as some updates and announcements next week. :) I've been trying to take it easy for a bit due to some stress, so I apologize about the lack of updates recently. 

Rest assured, Patreon mail will be going out in the next day or so! Some of you should have already gotten an email with the tracking numbers. This will be the last "regular" patreon box before the new changes, so I hope you all like it. :) Its been hard keeping it a secret!