Monday, April 30, 2012

ACEN 2012 ~ Artist Alley Report

Phew, crazy ACEN weekend is over!! I'm not sure my brain's ready to return to being a grad student yet, but hopefully it gets there soon since I have 40 midterms to grade ^_^

This was my first time doing an Artist Alley table ever, and luckily I shared a table with my friends (especially with all the crazy fashion show stuff going on!). I went into it not really knowing what to expect, and not wanting to run out of things. I need not have worried, since I have tons of leftovers, which incidentally will be going up in my store very soon! In fact, the rose headdresses are up already ^_^

Our table setup ended up working out perfectly, and we had enough variety of shelves to have multiple levels without ending up with a wire cave of doom or anything like that. Look, Lauren even remembered to take a picture!! (I did not, so thank you muchly, Lauren



Isn't it beautiful? ^_^ I'm really quite pleased with how well the table layout worked. Also, Lauren's pony display is amaze-pants!

There was pretty decent traffic through our spot, since we were right at the intersection of two large aisles, and also thanks to everyone else being much more vocal than I'm comfortable being.

I think we all ended up doing decently well, and my last-minute mustache necklaces were quite the hit. Time to make more of them, and embellished ones too? XD Also, lots of business cards were taken, so hopefully at least one or two of them end up being looked at again XD

Since this was my first AA, it was a lot of a learning experience. My first conclusion is that I really don't enjoy being a salesperson at all. My second conclusion is that mustache necklaces and fuzzy bows seem to be the preferred items at ACEN. My puffy bows weren't really much liked, and I think my rose headdresses were just outside the general price range. Hopefully I can manage to sell them online, since I really don't need more than a hundred puffy bows all for myself... My third conclusion is that I need to wear an eyecatching full-on OTT Lolita outfit, complete with elaborate hairstyle. Preferably in pastel pink, although my Sunday outfit seems to have been reasonably eye-catching. Maybe bringing my own tablecloth would help too, since then the entire table would be a different color than the standard.

Since I was so busy running around like a crazy person, I ended up not actually doing any of my Saturday or Sunday cosplays I had planned. I did do Zekrom Lolita on Friday, but I was too busy and forgot to take any real photos. Lauren again to the rescue took a photo, kind of. It was after I'd shed my wings and tail, unfortunately, and rearranged my hair to be less painful, but still, general idea exists... Basically kuro-Lolita but with some electric blue bows in the hair (one on top, on at the end of the ponytail bunch going down my back - you can see it in the table photo). So yay!



And of course, my Sunday outfit - the one "real" Lolita outfit I wore all weekend, since it was the only day I wasn't either cosplaying or needing to have my hair in a way that was suitable to being stuffed inside a wig at a moment's notice.



I'm wearing the skirt and headbow that I bought at the AP booth, in fact. I had seen this birdcage skirt on the Japanese site, and really really wanted it. And they had it at the booth! In black! In skirt form! It was just too perfect to resist. I thought about getting the socks too, but couldn't really justify spending the money after I also bought a purse from them. It's a really nice purse, and roomy too! Hopefully I get some good use out of it, since I've been needing a nice black Loli purse for awhile now ^_^

All in all, a really exciting ACEN! A report about the fashion show will probably come next, but I want to wait until I find out more about whether it's okay to post my photos or not. I already posted two of them, since I didn't realize we might not be supposed to (nobody said anything about it at any point), but I want to refrain from doing anything else for now.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

The Velveteen Rabbit

Inspired by nothing in particular, I've succumbed to a sudden desire to make the decor in my room more coherent to a particular aesthetic. For the longest time, my room's been vaguely girly with random splashes of J-idol and anime fandom posters. At least all my furniture is mostly white or neutral wood, but that's about it. I've decided to take it in a more coherently romantic girly direction (which means taking all my posters and putting them away in a different place, not that there's enough wall space for even half of them anyways). Maybe if I ever get to a larger room, I can put them all up on a dedicated fandom wall ^_^

The first bit of my renovation was addressing my wall clock that I've had for the past four years. I bought it because the shape was nice, and the color scheme, but I'm honestly not a particular fan of Marilyn Monroe. So I figured, why not redo the clock face myself?!



I've always loved The Velveteen Rabbit, it's one of my favorite childhood stories and definitely speaks to my heart. I figured it would be perfect to have as a clock face - I had a lovely mental image of the rabbit slouched in an arc just right for the edge of a round clock. Plus, the color scheme would fit right in with the aesthetic theme ^_^ And with that, I just started sketching



Once I got the position and shapes about right, I went ahead and inked the main outlines of the rabbit and the star. I also inked in the shapes marking the main hour positions.



Next was coloring the design! This was a great excuse to finally bust out my Prismacolor Art Stix, which I've had for quite awhile, but never actually used until now. Well, I was missing out, because they're quite amazing. The rectangular prism shape is really interesting, because you can use the wide edges for filling, and the corner points for details. The texture is also really nice, the colored areas feel kind of glossy, but not waxy like if I had used crayons. Blending is really nice, and as a last step, I buffed all the colored areas with a Kleenex, which softened all the colors together and gave it a nice finish.



I then colored in the hearts and the dots marking the seconds using Sharpie. The numbers are silver stickers. I went with just the four cardinal ones because putting on more numbers would end up covering up quite a lot of the design :( I had to cut a slit to get it into the clock (I couldn't actually pull out the hands), and didn't notice how badly it showed in the finished photo - unfortunate lighting. It's not actually very visible at all once the clock's back on the wall.



And there we go, all done!! I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, considering I drew it freehand, and it was my first time coloring with the Art Stix!