Posted

Apr 24th 2009

Mood

Cheerful

Music

-

So, now that things have settled down i decided to write a journal/report about the convention experience this year.It was our first year staying at a hotel for sakuracon. We stayed at the Sheraton Hotel that was just one street away from the convention center. This was extremely convenient. The room was just the right size for us 4 girls and our mass quantities of props and bags xD. The beds and pillows were extremely comfortable! it's the best 93 bucks i've spent in a looong time!

Thursday Day/Night:
pretty much was "OMG I"M NOT DONE WITH MY STUFF WTF AM I GOING TO DO!!!" at my house. i had to put multiple coats of sealant on my gourd cause the sand kept falling off. we worked on the fingers and lighting of the claw. darilyn left to pick up jenny at the airport around 8 pm. They came back around 9 something (i think). We finished up darilyns claw around midnight, hoped to Pete that it would dry in time for the next morning. We quickly rigged straps for my gaara gourd and darilyns claw. Jenny and darilyn painted/attached buttons to her coat. as soon as they left i went inside to go pack and finish up my costume. And just our luck our sewing machine had broken the day b4... =____=; so, my mom had to drag out the old foggy one, i had to clean and oil that sucker up as soon as i had awoken that day. so me and heather were up super late finishing up costumes and packing. i was up until 5 something in the morning because i had to finish straps on the gaara cosplay, pack everything including snacks, sewing kits, etc, etc, still hadn't styled lavi's wig which i started at 4 in the freaking morning =___=; needless to say that day could have gone better.

Friday:
we woke up at 8:30 i had to pack the food and the cooler, didn't get to eat breakfast because my sister wouldn't help pack the cooler and the food. make sure i had everything. i almost forgot my pills, darilyn's arm strap and my lavi shirt. i did forget my lavi scarf T___T this made me sad when i remembered finally at the photo shoot. anywho at around 9:30 am we started to pack the van with the big arse props and bags. this was like some crazy game of messed up tetras i think by 10:30 we were finally ready to go. we had to then go pick up jenny and darilyn at her house. we fit their bags in and then we were finally off! I think we finally got to the hotel around noonish and we definitely got some weird looks when we unpacked the van xD we got checked in and then started hauling stuff up to the room i think we made at least 5 trips 1 person had to stay with the stuff so the 3 of us were hauling like mad women!
after we unpacked i ate a granola and we got dressed in our day 1 costumes. I was Kazekage Gaara, Heather was Fou w/small axes, Jenny was Lenalee, and Darilyn was allen
with red hand.
So, we make our way to the pre-register line and O-M-G!!! it was freaking ridiculous! i think there was only 3 pre-reg booths and all the rest was registration. it took us 2-3 hours to get through that line. big mistake in taking my gourd with me through that T__T then whenever we were finally out of that we headed on over to the weapons check. after heather got her axes peace bonded, we made our way to the info booth to find out where the 18 and up stamp was, because we were going to attend the dating game and stuff after we got that i desperately needed something to eat so me and heather went to subway and after we were done eating we headed back to the hotel to take the gourd back because it hurt my shoulder too much. heather wanted to get into street clothes to do shopping and then dairlyn called us and they wanted to do the same. so i ended up being in cosplay for a bit longer.
we went shopping till it closed i went over to sweet kitty booth (work) and they didnt recognize me until i said who i was and apparently i wrote gaaras forehead thing backwards since i did it in the mirror. xD oh well lol
after that closed we went back to the hotel room to rest and drop off our stuff, i got outta my cosplay and dressed in street clothes then we headed over to the anime dating game xD it was awesome! 83 funny funny stuff after that was over i grabbed some pizza and then headed back to the hotel room to sleep xD

Saturday:
we woke up early because we needed to get to the cosplay competition line and then after that we needed to head back to the hotel room and get ready for the d.gray-man photoshoot at 4 and the next one at 8pm. after we got our giant props peace bonded, we rushed to the spot where we were supposed to meet the other d.gray-man cosplayers at then it turns out that the majority were inside and we didnt know because the schedule said the second floor by the Asian bell xD so we ended up taking a few pictures there and met an awesome komui, cross, kanda and allen after not alot of ppl showed up we went up the stairs outside to the main level. we went near the glomp circle and the pokemon shoot for our lil photoshoot
after camera whoring around a bit darilyn and jenny went back to the hotel room and me and heather decided to walk around and go camera whoring even more Then I ran into our old neighbor Liz (she used to live in our neighborhood until the end of elementary school. That was kinda weird seeing her after all this time i almost didnt recognize her and she almost didnt recognize me Then after we said goodbye me and heather went back outside to camera whore more and Then we were getting tired and decided we'd head back to the hotel room. Then I ran into (lychee-twist.deviantart.com) as we were about to leave I got to talk to her briefly. I felt bad cause i didnt get to talk to her more but i was super tired So i told her about the 8 pm d.gray-man shoot and she said she'd keep that in mind and she might bring davy out for that and she wanted to find a jack sparrow. So after we talked briefly me and my sis headed back to the hotel and rested i think all of us were almost down to our bras and pants in the room cause we were in those layered costumes and we got hot lol so we all plopped on our beds ate some pb&j sandwiches and watched spongebob then at 7:30 we all got back into gear and started putting costumes back on I had to quickly spray more got2be glued into my wig cause the spikes were flopping down then we were off to the convention center again me and heather walked to the shoot with our lights on our props and jenny was hauling darilyns claw so as soon as we got to the area i saw lychee in her davy costume (it was soo cool to see in person!!!) and she found a jack sparrow! 8D I got to say hi but that was about it 8( cause darilyn needed help getting her claw on (it wasn't fitting as nicely as i did b4) and seeing as i'm the one that designed and built most of it i knew how it worked so unfortunately i had to be the one to help and i didnt get to talk to lychee T_T
so, as soon as more d.gray-man cosplayers got there we went on top of the fountain thingy and took pictures 83 our lighted props glowed soo cool xD then they wanted to move the shoot inside cause of the darkness creates grainy pictures or something like that, so we moved inside to take the rest it was fun! darilyn and heather got pulled aside by a photographer and then i joined them cause their my group xD so we got to take lots of pictures by the "cosplayhunter.com" awesome photographer 83 I talked to an awesome allen 2nd uniform (raven-dethshadow.deviantart.com) and a awesome kanda (piercingnisha.deviantart.com): and there was also an awesome cross and tyki and pre-exorcist miranda there too X3 everyone in our d.gray-man group was soo cool and nice! So, after the photoshoot was over around 10 something we headed back to the hotel to drop off the big props and rest for a bit. then I still wanted to be in cosplay so i just stayed in my costume while jenny, heather and darilyn changed into street clothes. then we headed back for the yaoi support group pannel that was a definate funny experience it was a 18 and up pannel so we could talk about certain things ;D people told stories about how they got into yaoi and how some parents found out about it and then at the begining the lady running the pannel asked us to write down any questions for conversation topics and she dared us to scare her so naturally darilyn tried we think we scared her cause she didnt read one and said something about it being too graphic (darilyns question ). so after about an hour we got tired and left. we were kinda craving some food. i wanted a cookie real bad i went to subway but they didnt have any D'8 then me, darilyn and jenny went downstairs and saw ppl on the escalators with smoothies and i was like "omg! must get smoothie!!" and the mexican place at the bottom had them!!! so i got a cheese quesadilla and a smoothie and darilyn and jenny got a smoothie and shared a plate of nachos this blue haired cosplayer (i cant remember what anime it was from) i had seen a couple times b4 asked me for a picture and then we met up with heather and went back to the hotel room to finish eating and sleep xD

Sunday:
Jenny had to leave early for the airport unfortunately 8( so after jenny left we started packing, me and heather got into our cosplays and at 10 am we started hauling the props & luggage down to the ball room to be stored until we were done with the con. we took like 4-5 trips and then we went into the convention center to spend the last of our moneys in the exhibitors haul we ate in the exhibitors haul (they had like a cafe) and we went shopping until it closed and then headed back to the hotel to haul the stuff down to the loading area and waited for dailyns mom to pick us up. =D
after we packed all the stuff in we decided to go get ice cream xD then head home

that was a really fun convention

anywho now for the exciting news!
last friday at work my boss asked me if i would design some cute characters for their store mascots and said they would more than likely be put on bags and folders and possibly even plushies! he's at a convention in taiwan right now for making this stuff I'm soo excited! i really can't wait to see my stuff published on bags and stuff!

anywho i gotta go get ready to go to the store,
ttyl,
Crystal