How We Make Everything
There's no warehouse. No factory. No fulfillment center.
It's me and Cheyenne in a 600 square foot loft — my parents' loft, if we're being honest — making almost everything by hand.
Here's what that actually looks like.
The Candles
Cheyenne pours every candle on a workbench we set up in the corner of the loft. She does about 35 at a time — that's all that fits on the table. Each batch takes 2-3 hours between heating, pouring, and cooling.
Every box includes an atmosphere candle. A scent designed to put you in the scene. An alchemist's workshop. An old timey ship. Whatever the episode calls for.
Then there's the character candle, available exclusively in the Hidden Archives. These are Cheyenne's interpretation of what the characters smell like. Thane, for example, is sandalwood, amber, and suede. She decides the scents herself, unless I've written something specific into the story.
She learned candle-making from our friend Emma, who's a chemist and owns her own candle company. Emma walked her through every step — sourcing, testing, troubleshooting. It wasn't YouTube guesswork for once. It was proper training from someone who knows the science.
That said, disasters still happen. One time the spout unscrewed while there was hot wax in the warmer. Wax went everywhere. Science can't fix clumsy.
The Tea
Cheyenne blends the tea too.
We source ingredients from a few different wholesalers, and she mixes each blend by hand to match the episode. She sticks the labels on, seals the containers, and packages everything herself.
There's no tea factory. Just Cheyenne at the table with bags of loose leaf and a kitchen scale.
The Artifacts
This is where it gets messy.
We make most of the artifacts ourselves. Resin casting. Laser engraving. 3D printing. DIY crafting. Whatever the story needs.
One time we learned that if you leave resin in a plastic cup too long, it starts to cure. And when it cures, it gets hot. And hot melts plastic. The stickiest mess you can imagine.
The bookmarks change every episode. Some are wood — stained and engraved. Some are resin. Some are metal. Some are velvet. Whatever fits the theme.
The engraved metal cards for the Hidden Archives? We make those too.
And then there's the Memory Stone Game.
I wrote it into the story — a game the characters play. But then I thought, what if it was real? So I wrote actual rules, designed the symbols, and 3D printed the stones. It turned out so good it could probably sell as a standalone product. I've always wanted to design a game. Tried a few times and could never figure it out. This one finally worked.
The Printing
Some things you can't do yourself.
We outsource the printing of the episodes. The books are professionally printed on quality paper stock with proper binding. That part, at least, we leave to people with industrial printers.
But the stickers? I design them. I print them. I laminate them. I run them through my plotter. Every single one.
The Boxes
Cheyenne screen prints the boxes.
She taught herself from YouTube and a pile of messed-up boxes. It took a while to get it right. But now every box that ships has that hand-printed mark on it.
Packing Day
On big shipment days, we take everything that isn't bolted down and move it into our attached bedroom. The loft becomes a packing warehouse.
Cheyenne packs every box. I finish them — sealing, labeling, stacking.
The first time we shipped, we had to pack 170 boxes. We were still in our apartment in Virginia, and it was chaos. We stayed up until 4am watching the entire Harry Potter series, still not done. Eventually we started making mistakes, so we stopped. The next day we finished at 5pm.
Now we've got a system. It's still exhausting, but at least we know what we're doing.
What People Don't Realize
My sister is a paying subscriber (I know, I'm heartless making my sister pay, but I also live in our parent's upstairs) She came over to help one day and said she didn't realize how much work goes into this.
We touch almost every item.
The candles. The tea. The artifacts. The stickers. The bookmarks. The boxes. It all passes through our hands before it gets to yours.
That's not a flex. It's just the truth. There's no team. No staff. Just two people in a loft who care way too much about the details.
Cheyenne
I should probably tell you about her.
Cheyenne's background is cosplay...and not casual cosplay. She's the kind of person who buys the costume designer's books to figure out the exact material and correct color. If she's cosplaying Obi Wan, she's researching the original fabric weave.
That attention to detail translated directly into this.
She's the one who makes sure the candle scent is right. The tea blend is balanced. The artifacts feel authentic. The boxes look perfect.
I write the story. She builds the world around it.
Why It Matters
We could outsource more. Probably should, eventually.
But right now, this is how it works. Every box is made by hand, packed by hand, shipped by us.
When you open your box, you're not getting something that rolled off an assembly line. You're getting something we built in a loft, probably while listening to a podcast, definitely covered in wax or resin or tea dust.
That's Everlore Hollow.