You know what's crazy? The BINKABU Advent Calendar has only been happening since 2021, but it feels like it's been around forever. It's been such a staple event in our years, so it's more than a little upsetting to announce that its future is uncertain.

How did the Advent Calendar begin?

As a designer of bird earrings in a world where there are... so many birds, and so many bird lovers and crazy bird people, I get countless requests for custom designs and new species. This is very overwhelming, not only because it's a lot of requests, but because I am a chronic people pleaser and over-achiever, and I want to do it all. I also really empathise with those who want to see us create bird species that are close to their heart!

Towards the end of 2021, I was struggling to accept the fact that there was no possible way for my small little business to satisfy all these requests. I was also yearning to try something outside of the ordinary with my designs, and felt the need for more COLOUR. I was restricted by my self-enforced design boundaries, the very guidelines for my signature style; cute, recognisable, wearable. The fact that the recognition of each species was paramount in my designs meant that I'd never really done anything quirky or outside the box. This made me question whether I could potentially do a small batch, limited run of some wacky products that wouldn't need to return to the flock.

Fast-forward, and I was doing a bit of grocery shopping during the tail end of the year. I stumbled across an Advent Calendar, just a simple, branded chocolate one with really gross chocolate, not much bigger than an A4 piece of paper. You know the ones. All of a sudden, from the depths of my constantly-wired-and-constantly-plotting ADHD brain, an idea formed.

An earring Advent Calendar. To house the millions of ideas for colourful birds I'd already had...

But hang on - that's 24 pairs of earrings. Would anyone buy 24 pairs of earrings at once? And imagine the price! There was no way I could create something like this and keep it: 1. Affordable enough for my customers, and 2. Profitable.

So boo-hoo, it wasn't going to work. I wasn't in the business of making small, generic studs that might be feasible for an actual 24-product... product. I designed detailed, intricate birds, pieces of wearable art. So a massive, singular Advent Calendar product was off the table.

But the powers of hyper-fixation cannot be stopped.

My brain housed an idea that was desperately trying to find itself, an idea centred around the Advent Calendar concept and a collection of joyful, colourful earrings. What about a collection? NO. I could never, ever release a collection of 24 birds. That's crazy. Way too much work.

But if I could do just ONE bird at a time? Every day, for 24 days? I don't know how or when or what spurred the thought, but like most of my brilliant ideas, it was just there one day - an online calendar.

I was going to become one with the Advent Calendar *gasp* My goodness, I WAS the Advent Calendar. Every day, for 24 days, I would open a cute little window into my brain to reveal a secret gift - a new design, a shoppable product.

Thus, just like that, a rough plan was in place - we were going to host a 24-day shopping event where ONE design was released per day, similar to opening a little Advent treat each day (sans the gross chocolate). As this was the first time we'd taken on such a huge workload in terms of design and making, numbers were going to be extremely limited for each design, only 10-20 pairs of each.

We designed the colossal collection, delighting in the creative freedom and the pretty colours and the glitter and the FUN. I planned how it would all work on the website, made a plan for the shipping of the products (the most complicated part of the Advent Calendar, in fact), and it was go time!

The result? We created a shopping FRENZY that had designs selling out within seconds and even over-selling as customers checked out at the exact same second. It was thrilling, it was nerve-racking, it was... a huge success! 

After just a few days, we knew - the Advent Calendar was here to stay.

Then came 2025.

Our hardest year yet. By the end of it, we were thoroughly spent, and very nearly out of business. A lot of things happened last year, many GOOD things, of course, but some so utterly heartbreaking we are still on the road to recovery.

We needed to rapidly adapt and come up with some big swings to pull through. The 2025 Advent Calendar was a literal life-saver here, with all of the designs being a huge success. And of course, the Aussie Mammals were SO successful they got their very own preorder!

But as usual with the Calendar, January rolls around and I've once again forgotten just how much work is involved to pull it off.

Can we do it again? I'm not sure. I can't say what our team and structure will look like at the end of this year. Do I want to do it again? Yes, absolutely!

Only time will tell if there is to be another Advent Calendar for us. But right now, I just have to thank you for being involved, because it got us through some hard times and I am beyond grateful for your support. I hope you love your new pieces and they bring you the joy you deserve. ♡

With love & gratitude,

Maddi