Story time.
A year and a half ago, we took the plunge of trying to make artisan keycaps. By our standards now, the results were horrible. Against our best judgement, we decided to post on Reddit. Reception was warm and a few people really went out of their way to encourage us to continue. Amongst them was a dude named notbitcoin aka BTCtopre. I didn't know much about him except that he had a HHKB with RF 10th Anniversary caps.
When I needed some topre blanks to make molds of, he heeded the call. Wanted to look at a few artisans for reference, dude came through. When we were apprehensive and unsure whether we should go to sale, he told us to quit being *****es. In many ways, KeyKollectiv wouldn't be here without his support. We vowed that he would be rewarded for his efforts.
For a full year, we sent him caps from each of our collection. He would reply with feedback about what he liked and what needed work. And though he may not have considered it, we took all the advice to heart. With his help, we improved after ever release. When we released the first series of Snackeys, he jokingly suggested we do blue figs. We didn't have the time/bandwidth to do it then but I hoped I'd get a chance to revisit that.
Anyway, without further ado. We present BitBerry. A Snackeys homage for BTCTopre for believing in this pair of scrappy-doos. We'll be sending him one. The other 9 we made will be given away in the Fruit Reboot sale.
Moral of the story. If you see some new artisan showing potential, give him/her some encouragement. You might have a cap made for you in the future!
