Sunday, January 20, 2013

HRM Steampunk Symposium Review - Sunday (Part IV)

Continued from Part III

Morning rolls around pretty quickly after you finally pass out sometime after 1:30 am. I'm not sure what woke me up, but I found myself staring at the ceiling in the hotel bed, while Cindy was sleeping peacefully. Since the alarm clock on the other side of the room was blocked by the chair, I grabbed my phone thinking it was some where close to 7:30 or so. Wrong, it was 6 am, ye gods shoot me now or at least hit me with a brick so I could sleep for another hour or two.

I rolled over and tried to get back to sleep and was almost successful until my phone alerted me with a text message (of course the one night I forget to shut that particular notification off I get a message - curse you Murphy) from my father in law, wishing me a great and productive day. I love that I get those messages from him and a couple friends as well. It really gives me a great start to the day even if it was at 6:30 am. I ended up tossing and turning until 7:30 ish when Cindy finally woke up and then jumped in the shower.

Of course Murphy was still having fun and decided that 3/4 of the way through my shower, I didn't need any more hot water. I was not amused and promptly removed myself from the shower to get dressed and go make myself a much needed cup of coffee before texting my husband so I could chat with him and the kids on Skype since I wasn't going to be home until about 10pm. There is something to be said for technology in cases like this. Of course it also leaves open all sorts of hilarious moments like when Cindy got out of the shower :

My son: "Mommy, where is Cindy?"
Me: "She just got out of the shower."
My son: "Can I see her?"
Me: "...... She needs to get dressed Tarin"
My son: "Oh."
Cindy busts up laughing from the other side of the hotel room.
Me to my husband who is laughing in the background: "He gets that from you!"
My husband: "He's just looking out for me!"
Of course my son thinks it's hilarious just because we're all laughing.

Ah, out of the mouths of babes.

After chatting with my kids and husband, Cindy and I started to pack up our suitcases. If we had been coherent enough on Saturday night, we would have been smart and started packing and arranging things then, but we had too much fun at the Ball and then laughing and giggling at our neighbors until all hours of the morning. But we had to deal with the two suitcase explosions first thing in the morning, which actually didn't take that long to get taken care of. The next bit of fun was us getting our suitcases and other stuff to the car before heading up to the vendors room. I think we sat there for 20 minutes figuring out a process to get the crap down there and then to get the other necessities, read: cash box, coffee, brains, and us, up to the vendor hall. 

Once we got the plan worked out, Cindy took her stuff down and then came back up for the items that needed to be taken upstairs, well most of them. Then it was my turn and let me tell you, hauling a heavy suitcase (dear god why did I bring 3 pairs of boots!) in a steel boned corset it quite an interesting feat. Even more interesting it getting said suitcase into the back seat (club cab) of a pickup truck, but I did it with little bodily harm to myself and very little swearing, not like I had enough breath to swear and wrestle with the suitcase at the same time though.

Ok! Suitcases in the truck, time to head back up to the hotel room and grab the rest of the stuff to take up stairs, like the plastic tub with the bottle of whiskey and wine as well as our change of clothes to breakdown in. Mission accomplished and I didn't spill any of my coffee either.

Me in my Airship Captain's outfit
Sunday's day of vending went pretty quickly and was a pretty good day with everyone getting their last minute purchases. I ended up with a couple potential custom orders for after the show which makes me quite happy. Friends stopped by to visit and we chatted with other vendors during the slow times to see how everyone was doing.

By the time 4 pm came around, Cindy and I could feel ourselves fading. At some point I ended up loosening the lacing on my corset because one of the pieces of boning was sitting on my hip bone weirdly and causing a bruised spot.The things we do for fashion, right ladies? ;)

As soon as the last customer was out the door, the corset came off and instead of heading out to the restroom to change (switch shirts was all I had to do) I performed the age old trick of putting on one shirt and taking the other one off underneath it. Cindy opted to go change in the restroom of course she had a bit more to change into that I did. There is something to be said for wearing dark pants with your costume that you don't have to change out of.

Full view of the costume (still a work in progress)
Breakdown is always a double edged sword. It means I get to go home and sleep in my own bed, but it also means that the fun weekend has come to an end and it's time to head back to the real world and real job.

Of course I never know where to start with breaking things down either. My booth help is always the one to ask "How do you want to do this?" and my response is always "I have no fricken' clue." You'd think after vending all the time I would have some sort of plan. Nope, I don't. I usually stand in the booth for at least 10 minutes trying to figure out how I want to start putting things away and this event was no different.

While I sat there trying to get my brain in gear, Cindy started to pack up her art and such and by the time she was there I actually had things planned out. "I love it when a plan comes together."

This year there were no instances of me smacking Cindy in the need with a clothing bar for the gridwall (thankfully), but there was lots of giggling and laughing and throwing of things. I think we actually got packed up in just under an hour. Go us!

Cindy dresses as my First Mate
Then came the conundrum of getting everything outside. (Remember the load in over in Part I?), yeah we did  too and we really weren't looking for a repeat of that. Thankfully the hotel was letting us use the main elevator to load out! Wooohooo!

Now when we loaded in, the sun was out, when we loaded out, not so much. It was 5:30 and well it was fairly dark and there was only two of us which meant, one would have to sit with the stuff outside while the other schlepped everything downstairs, but that also meant that the remaining stuff upstairs was left unattended. See where this is going?

Booth
So we got creative, the grid wall went down on the dolly first and then we loaded all the tubs onto it. Cindy made a couple trips down with smaller items like stands and such that couldn't be put into boxes and shoved them into the cab of the truck. When she got back up stairs we began the journey towards the elevator with a *very* heavy load and the carpet that we had to roll across didn't make the job any more difficult, then it was out the door to the hardwood floor....(yes I was sliding on the floor again) and over to the gangplank to the platform for the elevator. Things were going smoothly until we got the front tire of the dolly stuck not once but twice. Ok, down we go.....uh Cindy how are we going to stop this thing?

Packing up
We actually didn't have much problem getting the dolly stopped but we did have a couple pieces start to slide off the dolly, which were caught by Cindy. Ok, into the elevator and down we go, out of the elevator and oh crap....there go some of the boxes from the front of the grid wall. Pick them up and off we go, aw crap there goes the stand for the ascots. Whoops! it's not round anymore. Oh well...let's get the truck loaded.

Cindy sat with the dolly while I went and got the truck. The  drawback of using the grid wall as a base for everything is that everything has to be removed because the grid wall goes into the truck first. We're still working on a better system for this - or maybe just a 3rd person to help out (hint hint Tawmis).

Grid wall in - check
Plastic tubs in - chuck
Suitcases removed from the cab and put in the back  - check
Rest of the stuff shoved into the cab of the truck - check

Time: 6 pm - let's go home.

Me after Con :)
Cindy, chipper as always
The ride home was pretty mellow, we traveled down to Oso Parkway where we stopped at Dairy Queen for dinner, and ice cream, made a stop for gas and then drove back to San Diego, well Casa de Oro really, to unload the truck and then I dropped of Cindy and headed home to go sleep in my own bed. I made it home by 9:15 pm, counted out the cash box, tallied up the totals and then went in and PTFO'd in bed because I had to get up at 4:00 am to be to work at 5 am.




All in all it was a great con, the room we were in was beautiful and we seemed to have a lot more traffic than last year. I'm really looking forward to going back again next year as well.

I really owe a debt of gratitude for Tawmis for all his help with loading up and dealing with all my text messages with photos as well as keeping the Wyng'd Lyon Facebook page  as well as the Original Cin Facebook page updated. He help was invaluable and his updated added a light hearted mood when things got a bit tense for us while we were vending.

A special thanks goes to Cindy as well, for sharing in my madness and coming with me to vend for the weekend. I always have such a great time hanging out and being generally silly when we're at events.

Also a big thank you goes out to all the customers that came and shopped our booth! With out you the weekend would not have been as enjoyable. Everyone was so friendly and pleasant to deal with and we enjoyed making new friends and associated this time around.

Now it's time for me to get a few more days rest and then start prepping for Wild West Con in March out in Tucson. I hope to see many of you there.


Thank you all for taking the time out to follow us on this journey and read my ramblings too!

Until next time, take care!

~Colleen
Wyng'd Lyon Creations








Saturday, January 19, 2013

HRM Steampunk Symposium - Saturday aka Part III

If you haven't been following the thread the previous posts about the weekend are over at here at: Part 1 & Part 2

There is something to be said for being able to wake up naturally and not by a 3 or 5 year old climbing over you wanting you to get up because "It's sunny outside mommy!" I love my kids, I really do, but man do I enjoy the weekends where I get to go to out of town events and have some "Me" time.

So when I woke up on my own at 7:30 am I was happy yet irked that I was up that early on a Saturday morning with no kids to wake me up. Though it did give me time to shower, and go through the unfinished vests that I had brought with me to work on before vending opened at 10 am.

I have to say Cindy rocks my world, she helps me out immensely by sewing buttons on vests that I sew together, handwork is not something that I particularly care for unless it's cross stitch or needle point. Hand sewing buttons or hems is one of those things I hate to do. Thankfully Cindy is the opposite, she loves to hand sew and I owe that woman vast amounts of chocolate or whiskey, or both!

The one drawback about the Queen Mary compared to most hotels is that there are no coffee pots in the room. We discovered this the hard way last year, thankfully they have a pretty good coffee cart on the ship, but with the amount of coffee that I go through, it gets a bit pricey at $2 per cup. So this year I dug out the trusty french press and the electric tea kettle, and brought a pound of coffee with me. So with coffee cup in hand, I plugged in the sewing machine and started adding button holes to the unfinished vests. By the time 9:30 rolled around I had added button holes to 8 vest and left it at that to get dresses and head up to the vendor hall. While I was sewing Cindy ran up to the coffee cart, got herself some tea, an assortment of meat and cheese and a danish for me.

Then it was time to get dressed and head up to the vendor room. Now I decided last year, due to lack of sewing time for myself, that I would take my wedding dress with me since it still fit (even after having 2 kids...you ladies feel free to call me what you will, it wouldn't be the first time.) and I didn't know if the Victorian dress I made a few ~cough9yearsbackcough~ still fit after having 2 kids. (I found out last May it did still fit - for those who were curious). I decided to bring it again along with the Victorian and my dress that I dubbed the Mina dress (this past Halloween's costume), like I said before it was a good thing I wasn't flying anywhere, I'd have gone broke in the "heavy luggage" fee area.

Dressed and caffeinated, we grabbed out items for the walk up the two flights of stairs, though the one thing I didn't take into account is that I needed to life the skirt up on my dress so I didn't step on it, which of course was a bit difficult considering I had a large box in one hand and my coffee cup and cash box in the other. Obviously I hadn't had enough coffee yet.

Making it to the first landing with only stepping on my skirt once, was a bit of a feat, getting to the next one had me almost on my rear, so once I made it to the top I adjusted things in my hand and then grabbed my skirt and made it to the Promenade deck with out killing myself or dropping the cash box & my coffee. Progress!!!

Set up of the items we laid down (Absinthe glasses) and cover up went much better, I didn't try to turn the glasses into multiple pieces this time. Once set up we sat and waited for the doors to open.

Sales went much better on Saturday and we had quite a few visitors. Finneas from League of Supremely Evil Revolutionaries came by and gave us tags for our badges that said "Minion" and various other friends of ours from the SCA stopped by to see how we were doing.
Photo from the side of the booth

In between customers, Cindy and I finished up the vests that I had worked on earlier in the morning by adding the buckles for the back and sewing the care & content labels into the inside.

Me in my wedding dress =)


This cute Pi-Rat was from the Pirate booth a couple spaces over.
Generally I don't get out of the booth much aside for bathroom breaks or to get food and the occasional loop or two around the vendor hall. So when I finally finished most of the sewing, and devoured the salad that Cindy ran and grabbed us for lunch I decided to take a stroll around the vendors room.

The little guy to the right was a visitor to our booth from the vendors with all the Pirate accouterments a couple spaces over, where I picked up a button that Cindy and I decided that fit Tawmis perfectly.  (For those who don't know Tawmis, he's got some fabulous penmanship and he's also a pretty good writer, but he'll also say I'm biased too)

Cindy in her AnnaBell Leigh Langly outfit along with Senor Squeeky Pants
After my purchase of the button I continues on my wanderings but didn't get much farther than the booth belonging to Robert Quill where I perused some of his artwork and chatted (or as Tawmis would say "flirted" because in his world, me being nice [read=saying hi] to anyone male means I'm flirting. You'd think he was jealous or something ~winks~) with him for a while and dropped a nice penny for him to draw a piece of art of me, for me. He told me that he was talking at a panel (called Naughty Custom Art and the People Who Love It )  at Midnight and that Cindy and I should show up.  After I finished chatting with Robert, I made the rounds of the rest of the room and chatter with some of the other vendors to see how they were doing. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits for the day and were looking forward to attending the Masquerede Ball later that evening.

Once vending ended Cindy and I made a mad dash to the hotel room to change into comfy clothes (jeans & t-shirts!) to head back to The Auld Dubliner for dinner and beer. Hey! What can I say, I like good Irish food and Guinness!

After a nice Skype session with my kids to wish them a good evening, we headed out to the shuttle and off to stuff ourselves before heading back to the hotel to change into our clothes for the ball.

Forgetting that it was a Football Playoff weekend, we arrived a pretty well packed pub, though we were lucky enough to grab a table near the bar and between two TVs. Cindy isn't much of a football fan and while I do enjoy it, it's not something that I have to have myself glued to the TV for. We arrived a bit into the 3rd quarter of the San Francisco/Green Bay game and incidentally sat behind a group of people rooting for Green Bay. (I'm a San Fran fan) What made the evening hilarious was that one of the guys at the table in front of us was from New York, no big deal right? Well except for the fact that he was complaining it was cold.

Photo courtesy of our waitress
Wait! What?! Cold?! True, we've had some chilly weather (for us SoCal folks) and I'm pretty much always cold, that's what happens when your thin, but right after I sat down, I took off my sweatshirt and was comfortable in my t-shirt. It was not cold in the least. The waitress has us cracking up with her joking and Cindy and I were also doing our fair share of teasing too. The icing on the cake was when the waitress brought the guy out a hot wet towel. We died laughing, heck I even tipped her extra because of it.


Blue Moon for Cindy, Guinenss for me. 

Bangers & Colcannon for dinner!
 After we had our fill of good food, beer and a shot of whiskey, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for the Masquerade ball and that is when things went a bit south.

This is my Mina dress, based off Mina Harker's Gown in Bram Stoker's Dracula. I think I worked on it for at least 3 weeks. The pleating on the bottom was a 5 hour process alone.

I won first place in my department Halloween contest this past year (quite a redemption from last year where people say I was robbed by getting 6th place)

So I decided that it would be a great dress to wear to the Ball, that is until I got it on, zipped up and the side zipper of the top decided that it was going to give up the ghost and split right in the middle. Cindy and I got it fixed, well we though we did and it died again.

Ok...plan B.. change dresses? Not really what I wanted to do. Plan C...wear dress with the under corset? Didn't look half bad, but it really needed the top to make it a complete package. Ok, think Colleen. Ahah! Black waist corset to the rescue! Which resulted in this look. Not half bad for improvising, if I say so myself.






















Off to the ball we went....

The fan in the photo above came with me as well, one because it was given to me by someone (my #1 fan) really dear to my heart and it gets pretty damn hot in that dress, so the fan is a godsend.


Lee Presson & The Nails was the band that was playing and we had a great time listening to the music and watching others dance and socialize. After the ball came to a close we headed back to the room, cracked open the bottle of chocolate wine and giggled and interjected commentary into the conversation that was coming from the room next to us by some bit of royalty from the event. (Sarah you would have loved to have been there!) Yes the walls are paper thin, last year we had the people next to us banging on the wall because we were giggling too loudly. This time we were still giggling, but I don't think the neighbors even took notice, actually it was more like they didn't hear us over the sounds of their own voices really.

Soon there after we were both dead to the world and hopefully were going to have enough sleep to get us through Sunday's vending, load-our and drive home.

to be continued.....



Thursday, January 17, 2013

HRM Steampunk Symposium - Recap - Part II

Continued from Part I

So this is how things usually start out in the booth space:



Piles of totes, boxes and naked half body forms, or as Cindy calls them, the Nudie Pants Family. 


Usually the first thing we do is put up the gridwall so we can start hanging things like the banner and all the t-shirts, vests and other items. When I vend in San Diego I have the 8' gridwall to hang the banner from, traveling events, I bring some PVC and we erect it to a frame to hang the banner from and most of the time we are caffeinated enough to put the banner on before we zip tie the PVC to the gridwall. Not this time which of course I then do things like stand on the table to put up the banner. 




One of the above photos was (intentionally) sent to Tawmis because I know that when I climb on things around the shop it sends him into a panic (even though he tells me I'm quite cat like). Of course he took it in a completely different direction over at the Facebook Page in which he posted this and then proceeds to text me back and tell me that I was probably going to kill him for the post. 

After looking at the post all I could do was laugh, especially once the comments started rolling in. Again it was going to be one of those kinds of weekends (and no, I haven't pummeled him....yet)

The banner was up shortly there after and then came the fun part of figuring out where things were going to reside for the weekend.


The booth setup is pretty much the same at each show, but with minor adjustments here and there.


The Absinthe Glasses always end up at the back of the booth, mostly for fear of them getting knocked over and broken, though I was doing a pretty good job on my own trying to break them as I was setting up them up on table. I actually ended up chipping the base of one of them when I smacked it against another glass.

T-shirt forms and vests end up hanging from the gridwall and PVC pieces for display and Cindy's are gets dispersed throughout the display as well.



Final Booth Setup


Of course booth set up is never dull either, if we aren't dropping things, tripping over totes or each other, there are silly antics like Cindy dressing her "boyfriend" for the weekend.










Eventually the booth looks like this:




Booth set up done....time to check-in to the hotel room. While Cindy manned the booth I headed to the front desk and checked in. It was a great time to do so, because there was no one in front of me. 10 minutes later I had our room keys which was right around the corner from the desk and right near the stairs two floors down from the vendor room! After I deposited my suitcase (thank god I wasn't flying that thing was heavy), I changed into my outfit for the rest of the day and went to switch places with Cindy so she could change as well. 

Now..... Bring on the customers!

Cindy was also offering up custom sketches during the con and she made a sign advertising and was going to put "See the red head"on the sign and then realized that wouldn't have worked since we're both red heads. This is what she came up with instead:



Here we are in our outfits:


Colleen
Alastar Hyde & Colleen
Cindy

Friday's vending went by pretty quickly. Cindy worked on some sketches while I worked on adding more items to my inventory program on my iPad. By the time 6 pm rolled around for a much needed change into jeans, a beer or two and food. 

Last year we found the The Auld Dubliner and had dinner there and also discovered Feckin' Whiskey which I had to try just for the name alone. I was presently surprised how much I enjoyed and promptly bought a bottle once I got back to San Diego. This year we had it in our flask in the booth, purely for medicinal reasons though. Since we only got to have dinner one night last year, we decided that was going to be our dinner place both nights this year. We grabbed Noell and Alastar, hopped the shuttle and headed off to grab some beers and Irish food.


It's an Irish Pub of course I had a Guinness
Cindy
Noell
Cindy & Me

Then it was back to the hotel for some much needed prep and sleep for Saturday's vending.

On to Part III





HRM Steampunk Symposium 2013 - Recap - Part 1

For those of you who follow our Facebook page, I'm sure you saw the photos from the event that Tawmis was so kind to not only post, but add some pretty great commentary to as well. If you aren't following it, you missed some great posts to which I owe Tawmis a debit of gratitude and maybe a pummeling for at least one post. (Just kidding Tawmis!) He was even kind enough to cross post updates for Cindy over at her Facebook Page.

Overall the event was a blast and we made not only a lot of great contacts but some new friends as well.

The new location for the vendors room was much nicer and more central to the goings on of the entire event, plus it was pretty darn close to our hotel room on the boat too!




Thursday night Tawmis and I loaded everything from the shop for the event into my truck and I parked in the back yard with a tarp over it and prayed that it didn't pour all night. Sure I could have loaded up in the morning, but for those who know me, early mornings are not my thing no matter how much coffee is put in front of me. It was enough of a challenge to peel myself out of bed at 5 am to load up my suitcase and the rest of the items from the house. Thank the inventor of the programmable coffee pot, that's for sure.

I headed out to Cindy's at 6am and from there we made a stop for (more) coffee and some snacks for the road and then hit the freeway up to Long Beach. For the most part the drive was pretty uneventful, though there was a bit of a traffic jam that appeared out of nowhere and that I had to slam on the breaks for, but we came out of it unscathed and quite a bit awake for the rest of the trip.

We made it to the Queen Mary about 9 am and pulled into the staging area and in true form had the truck unloaded in about 15 minutes, much to the amazement of the security guard that was there. We laughed and told him that we don't mess around when it comes to getting things loaded or unloaded.

Now one of the biggest complaints last year by the vendors was the fact that we had to use the tiny elevator at the back of the ship, and by tiny I mean hotel maid cart tiny. If you are by any means claustrophobic  that elevator is the last place you want to be, ever. Well this year, we were told that it was in the contract that we could use the main (read: real sized) elevators to load in and out of the event. Bzzzzz! Wrong, well mostly wrong. If your items didn't fit in the shoe box elevator, you could take them up the main one, otherwise it was trekking to the back end of the ship to squeeze you and your dolly into the elevator and then try to get off the elevator before the door tries to smash you as you get out and then trek back to the middle of the ship to unload in the vendor room. Adventures in unloading to say the least.

Load in went like this:

1. Truck unloaded in loaded area - check
2. Spend 15 minutes trying to figure out what is going to go up first and how to minimize trips in the elevator of doom(tm) - check
3. Load up said dolly (which I replaced the inflatable tires with solid tires so we didn't have the flat tire/OMG why can't we move the dolly problem like we did last year.) - check
4. Maneuver the dolly into the freight elevator with out killing ourselves or each other. (mental note: bring oil next year to deal with ear piercing squeaky elevator gate) - done with lots of laughing and swearing.
5. Walk the loaded dolly that seems to have a mind of it's own on the varnished hardwood floor of the Promenade deck of the Queen Mary while trying to maintain my own balance because my boots have no traction while trying to find the vendor area with no signage. - check
6. Arrive at said vendor area and try to figure out where we're setting up. - check
7. Find our tables and unload the dolly and exit said vendor room to do it all again - check

Of course upon exiting the vendor room, the dolly decided that it had a mind of it's own and went right while I slid left and by slid I mean almost ended up on my butt in the middle of the room. At that point Cindy dubs the dolly as being possessed.

Trek back up the Promenade deck without falling on my rear to hop back into the elevator of doom(tm) (EoD from here on) and ...oh crap, what floor do we get off on to get back to the dock? As soon as the doors closed and we realized we had no clue where we needed to go, Cindy's phone decides that it's the perfect time to get a notification and we are graced with the whistle sound from the Hunger Games. Yup, it was going to be that kind of Con.  We were fortunate enough to have someone get on the elevator at the next floor who showed us how to get back to where we needed to be and tada, time to move the gridwall. 

Gridwall - I have a love/hate relationship with this stuff. (you can see a photo here  if you don't know what it is). It's great for displays, but a pain in the rear to haul around because it's metal and it can be heavy. For this show I bring 6 pieces that are 6' tall, I leave my two 8' pieces at home for this show. If you read last years re-cap you should remember that we had to haul the gridwall up 4 flights of stairs. So we thought "Hey, this year we can take the gridwall up the main elevator and be done with it." Yeah, not so much, we started to head that way and the security guard intercepted us and said we had to use the other elevator and the 6' pieces should fit just fine. . We decided to take that adventure through the EoD(tm) and made the statement that if the gridwall didn't fit, we were going to make the security guard haul it up the damn stairs.  Fortunately for him it fit. 

And we're off, to the next floor down. Whoops, oh well it's the scenic tour of the ship floors where we acquired a female employee, and we were off again, to the original floor, where her husband and two other employees joined us, which of course right after that point in time the jokes about being stuck in the elevator began and of course trying to figure out who the skinniest person (it wasn't me - I doubt my hips would have made it through the opening) was so they could crawl through the hatch if need be. Next stop....Promenade deck and down the walk and into the vendor room.

Once the gridwall was dropped off we took the main elevator down, turned the key in for the EoD(tm) and grabbed the suitcases, the last few items and went to set up the booth.

On to Part II









Tuesday, January 8, 2013

HRM Steampunk Symposium 2013

We're back at it!

Cindy (Original Cin) and I are at it again. This weekend, January 11-13, 2013, we'll be back on the Queen Mary for HRM Steampunk Symposium.

Last year's event was a blast and pretty well done considering it was it's first year. I've got high hope for this year and we're even hoping that we'll make it out to the Ball on Saturday night, provided that we aren't fried from a long day of vending or passed out from the drinks at dinner. We've been yearning to go back to The Auld Dubliner for dinner, their foor is awesome and not only do they pour a proper pint of Guinness, they have a nice selection of Whiskey too!

The plant is to depart San Diego around 6 am and arriving about 8 am barring traffic into Long Beach. From there we'll  be loading in probably sleep deprived as usual. Something that is pretty much a norm for any Con  that I've ever vended at. Hell, we'll still be sewing and such in the room and probably the booth as well. No rest for the wicked I tell ya. ;)

There are photos and a review of last years event here and while we're gone, I'll try to either post photos or get them over to Tawmis to put up either here or over on our Facebook page depending on what he has the time for.

We're not sure who our neighbors are going to be this year in the vendor room or what the set up is going to be, but either way there will be some shenanigans afoot. That's what happens when you get two sleep deprived red heads hyped up on caffeine together.

Fair warning to those aboard the Queen Mary, I've heard rumors that the The League of Supremely Evil Revolutionaries may be plotting dastardly deeds this weekend as well, so be on guard.

Until then, I leave you with this photo of Cindy and I from last year:



Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Happy New Year!

I hope that everyone had a safe and wonderful holiday, what ever you may celebrate and Happy New year to everyone. I hope that 2013 bring you all joy and happiness without any strife.

Cindy & I at HRM Steampunk Symposium
 2012 was a big year for Wyng'd Lyon Creations. We started off the year vending at HRM Steampunk Symposium on the beautiful Queen Mary. Our review of the event can be found here.  From there we did a few craft shows with the North Park Independant Bazar over at The Queen Bee Arts & Cultural Center and then prepped for GasLight Gathering in May. This was a second year at Gaslight Gathering and as usual it was a great time. The staff and all the participants are all so wonderful to be around. I did however slack on a review this year for the event. 

The next event was the North Park Festival of the Arts. The weather was beautiful and there was so much to see and fun to be had, though we ended set up near one of the stages and at times the volume was a bit unbearable at times. We're hoping to vend at the event again this year, but will have to see what the rest of the calendar looks like. 

Tawmis and his cool dog Odin
I actually took a couple big steps forward this year, the first was swallowing my pride and admitting that I really have too much stuff on my plate. I  asked my dear friend Tawmis from Pirate Booty & Neverending Nights to help out with the social media stuff for Wyng'd Lyon. For anyone who has a small business, you know how difficult it is to turn something over to someone else, but really I couldn't have picked a better person to handle it all. In addition to being smart, creative, and fun to be around, Tawmis has been there with lots of encouragement and to help life my spirits or talk me off a ledge when I'm on the verge of freaking out. 

Booth setup at SD Pagan Pride
For the first time I also vended at SD Pagan Pride. It was their 10 year event and to be honest it was the first that I have ever heard of the gathering. I vended with Sarah from Sinda Aran Glass and as always had a great time.  The recap can be found here. The people and the weather were amazing and I'm looking forward to getting out there again this year. 

Grand Opening Celebration
The second big step this year was signing a 6 month least for studio/retail space out in Casa De Oro. August was a full month of painting, moving and organizing the new space to make it workable. Not to mention nerve wrecking since it was such a big step for me and the business. We held a Grand Opening Celebration at the end of September and had a great turnout. 




SD Comic Fest Booth setup
Another new event that we participated in was SD Comic Fest at the Town and Country Hotel in Mission Valley. The event was a blast and was reported to have over 800 people for it's first run. The booth setup was quite attention getting because it was so out of the norm for a Comic Convention, but we had lots of people stop by and check us out. This is another even that we're looking forward to giving a second run in 2013. 

We had one more small craft show in November at Qualcomm Inc, which was our 8th or 9th year doing the event. This year we shared booth space with Elizabeth from Atomic Kitty and were blessed with beautiful weather and lots of great customers stopping by. 

Sewing on patches for a client
The Saturday after Thanksgiving was Small Business Saturday and we had an open house at the shop and had a nice amount of customers and friends stopping by to help support us and all the artisans that we feature at the shop. 

We wound down the year with family and friends for the holidays and then started up production for 2013. 

We're starting off 2013 back at HRM Steampunk Symposium, and then in March we have the honor of vending out at Wild West Con in Tucson, from there we'll be back at Gaslight Gathering and then who knows what the rest of the year is going to bring. 

Thank you to all the friends, family, customers and patrons for all the support and business that you gave us in 2012. We look forward to seeing you all in 2013 and joining us on the ride that we're about to embark on. 

We have some great things in the works for 2013 and we hope that you will be as excited about them as we are!

Best wishes in 2013,

~Colleen


PS: And because it was too cool not to post, here is a photo from Halloween of me as Mina Harker and Tawmis as a Pirate.

Mina & Capt'n Tawmis