- O
Thank you all for being here.
Hello everyone, thank you so much for coming to our GoFundMe. Our names are Alyssa, and Sabrina. We are a queer couple, who need immediate financial aid so that we do not become evicted, and thus threaten our lives into homelessness. We are artists that run our own merchandise businesses, and with the launch of the tariffs and the economic impacts within the United States of America, our businesses completely collapsed in May 2025. We have fought ceaselessly all of last year to try and adapt and bounce back, but all of our efforts have completely failed... We began to fall behind on rent last November, and was keeping up just enough to get us this far. However, as of last month in February, all of our resources depleted, and we are sinking very fast.
--------------------------------------------
What happened.
We are one of many people who are grossly effected with the current conditions of the United States. We are being targeted negatively by our country for being queer, losing Human Rights, and the rise of false information to dehumanize us for being transgender, yet, that isn't even what put us in this situation at all! We have been surviving So Much that we can't even stress about our freedoms being threatened. Our lives were completely destroyed over night do to Trump's decisions impacting the economy and thus our businesses, particularly with the start of the Tariffs. It has been downhill since.
These are our pools of income as with its history to illustrate the fall of our livelihoods.
Here are our financial statistics for Etsy shop 1 for Braivety.
Here is our financial statistics for Etsy shop 2, for SpecroliteAAA.
Here is our financial statistics for conventions via our card sales on Square.
Here is our financial comparisons for Kickstarter/Backerkit product campaigns before 2025 vs after.
The drop across all platforms is daunting.
After 10 years of making art our profession as independents, we understand how to be flexible and adaptable with ever changing business strategies, economic climates, trends, outreach, marketability etc. Having one pool of income falling through, is something we've experienced and have always managed to adapt too. Usually that is at the fault of the platform, or covid taking in-person conventions away. However, with every source of income both online and in-person, being not just down, but totally slashed to the degree that is being shown, it is clearly evident that these are impacts of the overarching economy that have no hint of leaving any time soon. It's especially evident, because we travel all over the country visiting many States to sell at conventions, and it is every single State, that is 60%-90% down on profits.
Here's a picture of Alyssa in front of her booth at one of these events, lol doi'n her best.
With inflation, and a corporate/capitalist rise in Art/Pop Culture Conventions, table costs to these events are becoming so expensive that we have lost the majority of our tour schedule. Last year we barley survived because we had 10 conventions, while this year for 2026, we were only able to keep 3... We cannot afford to renew tables that now cost $500-$1500+, when we made $1200 gross income at that convention. We cannot afford to fly to conventions because of the cost of flights are so high. Product both domestic because of inflation, and international outsourcing because of the trade war, have become so expensive that we cannot afford restock. Nor can we afford a sustainable quantity of inventory for new product to secure future income. Raising prices for our product to compensate for inflation, only brings lesser sales as well...
Alyssa has applied to 78 jobs, and Sabrina has applied to just as many, and yet we CANNOT find even an entry level position!... So many weeks and hours looking for such a solution, has thus far only proven to be a complete waste of time. Now with the debt so out of hand, getting a job well over minimum wage wouldn't even be enough to save us if one of us were hired a month ago! Doordashing where we live to find an immediate source of income, cannot keep us afloat either for the time it takes to make as little as $80 at peak times of the day. Alyssa tried opening commissions, but not only is it not sustainable, but her mental health has been so shot under all this stress, that Alyssa cannot accept anymore commissions. We jumped on doing our taxes Feb, and gave our tax information to our specialist March 5th, but we still have yet to receive our tax returns to apply for any kind of governmental assistance for financial aid or economic relief. Clearly, we cannot wait for either our tax specialist to finish our returns, nor the time of the application period on the State of Oregon to give us anything if we get approved.
Living like this with having no idea when/if it would end, we drained our savings, and maxed all our credit cards, hoping we'd bounce back to recovery! but things have only gotten worse, and after a year of fighting, we now have nothing left...
--------------------------------------------
What we need, and what to do.
Since May 2025, we believed perhaps this would be a rough patch that would turn around in a few months with some extra effort to adapt, so we did our best to try and fight for our 4 year rental lease. However, this has proven to become just our foreseeable future, and we cannot stay in our current rental. It is eating us alive. Every day has been a race against the clock anticipating next month's rent of $2700, and that is a ton of money when you aren't making nearly anything at all.
We moved into a TownHome March 2025 with the income we had prior to May 2025. We had the faith of a successful business that has proven stable and dependable for the last 10 years, even through the Covid Shutdown in 2020. Then just two months after moving into a place that was below our means, our rental suddenly became scarily WAY above our means. Everything we had worked so hard to achieve, was taken away instantly, immediately putting us in survival mode practically over night. We cannot stay in this rental. We must pay our debt, break the lease, and get out before our rental history is destroyed with an eviction. It is unsustainable, and with two months behind on rent, and a third around the corner, we can't make money to recover to pay that debt, ontop of breaking the lease, ourselves. This isn't even the money we technically need in addition, to find a new place to live after... We are in serious need of big help.
As is so common to the queer experience, Alyssa does not have any family to reach out too for help, aside from one charished member, her younger Sister with her inner family of 4 kids. Sabrina has some family, but they too are horribly effected by the economic state of our country and is barley surviving with little to give. Our chosen family with our friends and partners are in a similar position. We humbly approach anyone here willing to throw anything to help save us from homelessness, or spread the word on any platform or via word of mouth, to restart our lives in a small apartment that we can live in under these circumstances. We truly have nowhere else to turn, this GoFundMe is our last resort...
We are currently behind on rent by $5,268. In exactly a week from today starting April, it will become $7,968. Oh my...! That means, to get out, we need like... $10,000... to pay the debt, and break the lease. We are offering our deposit to the landlord, but that doesn't change the ridiculous amount of money we need to get ourselves out of this situation.
We have been communicating to our property manager and making small payments to our rent where we can since November, understanding our rights to stretch us out this far while attempting to buy time to recover. and we just couldn't. However, as of two days ago on Monday March 23rd, we were threatened to receive an eviction notice...
---------------------------------
What happens if we are Evicted/can't pay the debt.
Before I typed out one of the hardest emails of my life to my property manager in November the first time we were going to be late on rent, We were not aware of the severity of an eviction. We moved out living on our own and with roommates since 2017. We had a perfect, rental history, never missing a payment. We could not fathom even being late on rent 5 months ago! Now we are facing an eviction.
Now as per our recent experiences and research, we have learned... That no matter how secure you are, no matter how clean your record of crimes or success is--, If you get screwed over by forces bigger than yourself that are outside of your control, You get locked down in a lease contract that now turns against you with impossible demands, and if you can't recover on their timetable, the housing system ensures that you never will... If your efforts aren't enough, too bad, get out, they don't care it ruins your life.... An eviction is more than you being kicked out, it is a 7 year mark on your rental history that ensures YOU WILL NOT be able to be approved to find and move into a new place. Having a large debt unpaid even without an eviction on our record will result in the same thing. So... Being kicked out with no where to live inbetween applying for a new place, with no money to get out or leave, is how homelessness grows. And that is how Anyone can end up on the streets. That is the very real reality we are facing. It's crazy. The system is predetory. And it's so fast too... I wish I was exaggerating.
--------------------------------
What Alyssa and Sabrina are doing to keep fighting, & Other ways YOU can help out beyond GoFundMe!!!
You better believe we haven't just been sitting around doing nothing, and that still includes now and the future as well! This is and has been our plan.
We are here to show you guys that we are willing to work for anyone's support! We aren't just asking for money!!!
Throwing even just a few dollars a person into the GoFundMe is fantastic of course! It get's us the most benefit in the long run with less labor, no inventory consumption, and little fees. But! That isn't all that is helpful! So is supporting our shops, and our future projects!
We have a few! here we go!
-----
Etsy Shop!:
This breakthrough in Alyssa's last Kickstarter, also allows us to put up the Coffee Dragon Enamel Pins live on our Etsy. This is a huge deal because we have bled our inventory to nearly nothing left. Buying product from our shop not only gives us income, but it also may help revive the algorithm we lost on Etsy. Five star reviews also help a ton with visibility on search engines, and Etsy ADs! While sales are slashed, this could in theory help us have a stream of income between large projects and conventions again if the Etsy can gain momentum.
Here are some pictures of the new Coffee Dragon Pins, as well as other product we artists have available on the Etsy Shop above!
Some more merch on our shop as well!
-----
A Limited Online Print Sale that shall run on the Etsy today March 25th-April 17th of SpectroliteAAA Artwork to help fundraise more financial help.
Hi guys, this is specifically Alyssa, or SpectroliteAAA typing. While I am an artist, I sell most of my artwork in person, and time has retired a lot of older illustrations. However, I wish to offer the nostalgia and my skills of my previous work for a limited time for anyone wanting to support us in this way. This is great, because I know how to budget money aside to make this happen, and I can collect sale profits before the end of the sale, -put aside what I need for fullfillment-, and give payments to satiate the pressure of time with our Property Manager/LandLord, If we make decent sales.
THIS SHALL BE "MADE TO ORDER! "
How this will work, is I have 16 Art pieces available from today till April 17th. All these pieces can be seen being created from an empty canvas by hand, on my Youtube channel. here!
https://www.youtube.com/@SpectroliteAAA
The Print Sale shall be run on SpectroliteAAA's Etsy Shop.
Once the sale ends, I will place a print order with my local printshop, and ship out rewards once print production finishes. That is estimated to be around April 22nt. From there, me and Sabrina will ship all the prints! All proceeds from this sale outside of the creation and shipment of the prints, shall go into our rent debt or whatever we need to survive, such as paying bills, or moving into a new place etc.
Here are the available prints of my artwork.
Please know that if you buy one of our ready to ship options, such as pins, dice, or stickers, that it will be shipped via the standard shipping time of our Etsy within 1-2 weeks, while any print orders, won't be shipped till late April. We cannot combine package/shipment for the sake of organization, so please either keep product orders separate, or we will divide the single order with both product types into two shipping packages. This is to keep things as streamline as possible when we already are tackling like 5 different lines of work haha. Thank you for understanding.
Here's an example of some of SpectroliteAAA's/Alyssa's prints:
--------------------------------------------------------------
-----
Kickstarters and Backerkit Campaigns:
We have been working towards making large paychecks. However, in order to achieve in making a singular large paycheck, it takes more than a month, sometimes two of unpaid work! We have been working none stop since May. We have been making excellent progress in everything we needed to get done to set up this GoFundMe to be as optimal and hopeful as possible. Part of that, is just last week, we were able to progress far enough in Alyssa's last Kickstarter project to unlock her launching another one. We were at a wall in progression for a while because we no longer had the funds to ship out the rewards, and we cannot begin another project until they are. But after grinding Doordash, we were able to get enough shipped out to move on! YAY!!! For more information on that kickstarter, here is an update.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spectroliteaaa/cryptic-coffee-date-dragon-enamel-pins/posts/4643681
Now that Alyssa's Coffee Dragon Kickstarter is unlocked, Alyssa has been grinding out product designs, manufacturer prep, etc, to launch another kickstarter within this next week or so. The new pin set is themed off of Dragon Flower Gardens! A lot of the proceeds go towards the creation of product of course, but what has been left over might save our lives if we budget what we raise properly.
Last Fall, and still ongoing, Alyssa ran a second Pin campaign on Backerkit called the Enchanted Dessert Bakery, which seriously got us through from November to January. (She was working on it all last summer) The enamel pins from that project are currently in production, and will finish within the next month or two. Once the pins are shipped to wherever we may be living at the time, we will proceed to fulfill them as soon as possible. This will unlock the availability to run another project on that platform in addition to kickstarter in about two months give or take. We will continue to launch backerkit and kickstarter campaigns back to back, in efforts for our survival. Here is the project, and what pins to expect for the future on Alyssa's Etsy Shop.
Bakery Dessert Pin project.
Bakery Dessert last update.
https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/spectroliteaaa/enchanted-dessert-bakery-dragon-enamel-pins/updates/40164
Sabrina already, has also been working to create the layout and submit her next Kickstarter also in about a week. Her enamel pin set is themed off of Candy Witch Girls! And Candy animals as their own pins acting as the Witchy familiars. She is already approved, she only needs to get a few more pin designs finished. HERE is the promo link, for anyone that may want to follow it to be notified once it goes live.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/braivety/candy-coven-cuties-witchy-enamel-pins?ref=android_project_share
Here is just a single example of one of them!
Literally donating here, buying from our shop weather the print sale or our ready to sell items, or later once the kickstarters come in, these are ALL WAYS to help us! If you cannot, please share and spread the word!
----------------------------
WE WILL KEEP YOU GUYS UPDATED!
Thank you all so much for being here and hearing us out by making it to the bottom of this GoFundMe. We are willing to work for it in a variety of ways, but we need your guy's external support! Even something as little as $5-10 a person can potentially save our lives. If anyone wants to help but understandably cannot afford to give/buy anything in this economy, then we beg that you share this GoFundMe around on your social medias, share with your friends, family, extended family, whatever is possible and is willing, while retaining your comfort. Viewership on this is potentially more important than anything else!
Thank you so much everyone. We are in a seriously bad situation, and are in desperate need of help. Please help us survive homelessness. We will make updates here on GoFundMe as time goes on. For anyone wishing to come along with us on this ordeal, Alyssa will be making vlog updates on the situation on her Youtube Channel about how yall are helping us so you guys can see the impacts you have on saving our lives. Hopefully, it shall be a redemption story, and yall will be there to see us successfully break the lease, search for a new house, and move in a new place etc. It's gonna be a wild ride, happy to have anyone come with me if they are willing! (Alyssa~)
Thank you everyone.... so.... so much.
Organizer
