🤠 Rapid Round Up
🎁 Sabrina unboxed the new toy trend and explored the world of Sonny Angels, Smiskis, and blind boxes in this video.
🏆 We received the Canadian Award of Excellence at Buffer Festival… Does that count as Canadian citizenship for Taha?
📣 Sabrina joined The Great Debate alongside Julie Nolke, Gregor Reynolds, Amanda Lehan-Canto, Andrew Gregory, & Courtney Miller. You can check out the trailer on the Tin Can Bros channel.
✨ We have new bonus content! You can access them on our website using this month’s password: BRAIN.
👩🎓 Tutorial* by Sabrina Cruz
Make your own Claw Machine Widget
Have you tried Sabrina’s brain dump claw machine game?
Are you ready to make your own?
We’ve written up an easy-to-follow tutorial and created a downloadable template for you to use, and the best part is: it doesn’t require any coding knowledge!
You can find the tutorial here.
You can design whacky characters, showcase art from your portfolio, or share photos with friends in a unique and interesting way — all you need is a hosting plan to deploy your claw machine!
We recommend using Hostinger because they have a huge Cyber Monday deal going on right now where you can get up to 85% off certain plans. You can stack that discount with our usual coupon code ANSWERINPROGRESS.
The sale is on until Dec 15 so grab yourself a hosting plan for the holidays!
* This section features sponsored messaging from Hostinger.
🎧 Mixtape
Moody Academia
For when you’re totally studying and not pretending you’re the main character in a dramatic academic montage 🤓
🤐 Confessional by Melissa Fernandes
🕯️ Light’s out on the Candle project
After y’all sold out the After Hours candle in 2 hours earlier this year, I really wanted to make a larger batch to give a chance to the people who missed out. I’ve been working on that restock for the last 5 months… and it isn’t going well.
Our approach to making the first batch was small-scale: we hand-poured the candles, hand-labeled the jars, and hand-packaged each candle in my apartment. I fear my home will always smell a bit like that candle after I had to open each one during quality check.
I knew that this approach wouldn’t be possible for a larger batch so we worked with our fragrance partner to cost out how much the oils alone would cost and found out it would be a few thousand dollars (if you were wondering why, you can watch our video about it). Then we found a manufacturing partner in the US who could replicate all the other candle specifications for also a few thousand dollars.
But you gotta spend money to make money, right?
In our case, after doing the math, we found that we would make about $3 per candle. That’s not bad since we had a fragrance and manufacturing partner. Most of the work was theoretically done so what could go wrong?
A lot.
We sent over a couple hundred dollars worth of fragrance oils to make some samples and do new burn tests to make sure the new manufacturer was up to par. Those oils went missing at some point in late June.
So I spent the next four months trying to track them down. In the meantime, we had missed the deadline to get these candles up for the holiday season (because we would also need to account for the time to safety test the samples and manufacture the full batch), but the sample oils finally made it to the manufacturer who started pouring us samples right away… Only for them to get lost in the mail again.
I’m going to be totally honest, I can’t keep doing this. I’ve poured hours into trying to find oils/candles in the mail instead of working on the thing I actually love doing: making videos.
It’s hard to call it quits on a project that I care so much about, but we’re putting a pause on the candle restock. One day, when I don’t have a UPS tracking number memorized and I’m not a week behind on every video I’m working on, maybe the candle will return.
🗝️ From the Vault
🥚 Taha’s Kinder Egg Unboxing
When Taha learned we were making a video about blind boxes, he insisted we share this video where he and some friends “unbox” a lot of kinder eggs. Like a lot of them.
Yes one of the friends is Cavetown.
Taha has an interesting backstory.
🔓 Patreon Unlocked
🛒 Discount Sneak Peek
You might know that we’re selling a sticker sheet with the brain dump doodles Sabrina designed in her blind box video. With most merch drops, we give our Patreon supporters a little discount code but for the first time… we’re sharing it with you too 👀
🔦 Creator Spotlight
Proxy with Yowei Shaw
Check out Proxy, Yowei Shaw’s indie podcast where guests get matched with “proxies”—experts and strangers who’ve been in their shoes. It’s not advice or therapy, but a space for honest, funny, and sometimes cringey conversations about life’s big questions. Give it a listen!
⏭️ Up Next
💋 Is lip balm really all it’s cracked up to be? Melissa digs deep to uncover the truth xoxo
👖 What’s the deal with women’s pockets? Sabrina has a beef with the fashion industry and it ends this year.
🙏 Thank You
Thank you for subscribing and following our chaotic little journey - see ya next month!
from ur neighbourhood nerds,
Sabrina, Melissa, and Taha<3