Twin Con Time

So I finally have a moment to reflect on my past two weekends worth of cons: Youma and Con on the Cob. Both of them were a lot of fun and I'm excited to share all of the great stuff with you guys.

So let's start with Youma. I debuted my first RWBY cosplay, Yatsuhashi!

Of course I had my Coco with me the entire time because why wouldn't I? We generally hang out together for the whole con anyway. We were also the only two Team CFVY cosplayers at the photoshoot which was kinda sad but also pretty awesome. We did, however meet another genderbent Coco cosplayer who had a gun that actually transformed! It was pretty freaking awesome!

Sadly the photo is not entirely in focus, but you can still see how amazing that thing is!

We also made friends with a Ozpin's crew, who all had really nice looking cosplays and were fun to hang out with for a while.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of the actual shoot, but someone posted a bunch in their Facebook Album.

Saturday was BIRBCON, where we had a crap ton of bird laguz (along with a branded mage and a cat) for a very special photoshoot. There are only a few photos of us available right now, since we had a professional photographer do a photoshoot with us so it'll be a bit before we'll be seeing the final results, but you can see a bunch of us here, and I can at least share this photo we took.

One of the most exciting things was that we found A SECOND REYSON! She was not even aware beforehand that we were doing a Tellius shoot until we saw her in her Reyson cosplay Friday afternoon and invited her to join us, and I'm so glad she did! We also miraculously met someone who said that she and her friend were wanting to do Janaff & Ulki next year. So Youma may just become yearly Birbcon if this keeps up!

The other awesome thing is that a bunch of us ended up in this other photographer's video! You can see the video here, and look out around 2:20 to see a few laguz strutting their stuff!

Later on I changed into Yuan from Tales of Symphonia. Now what you guys should know is that this was actually one of my earliest cosplays, and it was an experiment for how to draft patterns (with the help of my magnanimous mother). Now, despite having had this costume for near a decade at this point, I've never actually worn it to a convention before, so I figured with the interesting architecture available as a backdrop, it would be a good time to dust off this sadly forgotten cosplay and finally wear him out & about to be appreciated! I did not, unfortunately, have time to fix up his swallow (as one of my first props, it was primarily duct tape, and I never even finished painting it >_<), but he nevertheless made his appearance at the Ren Cen.

I also got to step into the Saturday Tales of shoot, though there was not much Symphonia representation (75% of the people were from Zestiria or however you spell that). And I got to deliver my friend's Sailor Pluto staff, and she looked AMAZING in her cosplay!

Last up for the weekend was another new costume I managed to put together at the last minute. I wanted something warm, comfortable, and easy enough to wear around on a con Sunday, so I made Banjo, with my little plush partner, Kazooie!

I actually got recognized more than I was expecting to in this outfit, which was very exciting. The only downside is that I ordered the shorts a little small so I couldn't do fleece pants for the legs, they're just fleece leggings so they kept falling down as I walked around #cosplayproblems

Anyway, there were lots of awesome cosplayers there and I got some decent photos, which you can see in my Youmacon Facebook Album. Sorry, but I don't feel like taking the 3 hours it would take to upload them here haha.

So that was Youma, and this past weekend was Con on the Cob! I did a lot less cosplaying, as per usual I mainly went in steampunk gear since I was vending with my mom. Check out the table!

We did pretty well despite the weekend having felt pretty slow. And as for my outfits...

As I said, I did primarily steampunk, with a piratey look on Friday and my new kilt on Saturday! I did mix it up on Sunday for clean up though, since having a bunch of dangly things when you're trying to pack up all of your junk can be annoying. So instead I showed a little house pride and wore my Hufflepuff uniform.

And that's all she wrote! As for the rest of 2016, I only have one more event, which I'm vending at. I'll be wearing some wizarding gear as it the Yule Ball, hosted up in Cleveland, which is at the beginning of December. Otherwise I'll be putting my nose to the grindstone on my multitude of winter orders, so stay tuned for the lineup & the steady progress that will be trickling through!

Oddmall Recovery//Back to the Grindstone

This is a thing, right?

So my extended hiatus was primarily due to having Oddmall this past weekend, one of my biggest vending events of the year! It went swimmingly, aside from having more crap than usual and therefore taking longer to set up than anticipated. But I made more money than I have at any single event in my tenure so that was exciting!

Here you see my convention partner (mom) with our lovely setup! I had all of my usual items including MtG life counters; buttons steampunk airships, weapons and jewelry; ties & bow ties; along with a new venture using the same fabric: headbands! It was an idea I got while teaching sewing lessons; we made a few there and I realized we could just as easily make them reversible, and I could use all of the leftover fabric from my ties, as there's always odd shapes leftover that are hard to use for anything sizable. Additional ventures include some Luna Lovegood inspired lion hats (which were much admired but not purchased), continued forays into the world of crocheting adorable little characters, which I focused on cute magnanimous ones over the specific characters I usually do. Though I did make an entire team RWBY which sold all together, and someone actually bought the little Aang I had too. But most popular were the Soot Sprites, Calcifers, and most of all the BB-8s. 

I also finally have a much more legitimate sign that I didn't just do a 4th grade-style pencil rubbing on the front of my life counter carrying case... It even has some pretty tartan on it! 

And of course for an event like this, there's still plenty of costuming going on! As usual for my vending events, I went steampunk, with a little flair of Star Wars this time around. And my neighbors were awesome, and the guy decided to come back as the guy from Clockwork Orange on Sunday.

So now that all of that's over with and I can go back to focusing on the whole cosplay thing, here's what I've got going on.

First and foremost, I finished both of the items you saw in progress last time (you know, 3 weeks ago when I actually posted something last).

Both items are now with their respective owners and I'm moving on to the 15 new things I need to have done before Colossalcon. Oh boy. Here's the list:

Auron's katana (FFX)

Klaus' Gauntlet & Knuckles (Blood Blockade)

Goku's Power PoleCarrier (Dragonball)

Another Blunderbuss (Bloodborne)

Sakura's Bloom Festal (FE:fates)

Oh yeah, and if by some miracle I get all of this done early, I have someone who want's Takumi's Bow...

Not to mention the Team Avatar that I'm going to be doing with Jordan and a group of cousins, for which I still need to make Book 3 Aang and Zuko. Thank god Aang's outfit is just a pair of pants with some fabric draped over his shoulders... and Zuko's involves a lot of fancy little details... FML

So, this is what you can expect from me this coming month... and if you're not hearing from me, I'm probably stuck underneath a pile of worbla, so maybe send help.