all the things

I’ve basically got 2 weeks worth of stuff to post today. So hold onto your butts, it’s going to be a long post!

Let’s separate this into topics.

1. Las Vegas
So last week was Vegas for work. I didn’t think I was going to have to do this show again but it got pulled together kinda at the last minute so there I was again.
I was up at 5:30 Monday morning to ride to the airport. YUCK.

Thankfully I was in Zone 1 for all of my flights so no scrambling trying to find overhead space for my backpack (I don’t check any luggage – I just take a bunch of little knit dresses that don’t wrinkle and stuff them in a backpack for the week.) Of course we had layovers both Monday and Friday so it was a full day of traveling – and Monday was also setting up the booth after flying all day.
But I watched Hocus Pocus and La La Land on my flights in. Well, only part of La La Land, but anyway.

So I don’t have any pics for this section, so it’s going to be a big wall of text…
I was going to just lay around my hotel room Monday night, but after looking at the boring room service menu, I decided to venture out and see what I could find to eat downstairs. We stayed at the Palazzo, so I had the whole mall “Canal Shops” to look around. Well, while I was down there, I found the Void – which I knew was somewhere, but I didn’t expect to find it so quick. The Void is the VR game that currently has the Star Wars thing at Disney Springs. My cousins had told me about it and said I had to do it! So knowing there was one at my hotel in Vegas I was on the lookout for it.
So after wandering around a bit more, I decided to just stop in there and see when the next Star Wars game was going to start. The guy said “You want to go right now?” and I was like, sure, why not.
I thought they were going to have me wait on a few more people to show up, because everything I’ve heard is that it’s a certain number of players and you will pretty much always be playing with some strangers on your team. Well, guess what, it was just me. So I kinda awkwardly stood and watched the message from Cassian, then they stuck me in the rig vest and visor and put me in the room by myself. And yeah I was feeling super awkward. LOL.

But once it got started it was sooooooooooo cool. The room rumbles like you’re actually on a ship, you head to Mustafar and you can feel the heat and smell the smoke. You get to grab a blaster and shoot at stormtroopers. There’s one part where you’re supposed to be following a code K2S0 is giving you, while you’re also being shot at by stormtroopers… that would have been a lot easier with some other people in there LOL
I won’t spoil the whole thing but it was REALLY fun and really worth the time & cost. I can’t wait to go to Disney next year and have Chase play it with me.

So anyway Tuesday was the first full day of the show. I lowkey wore my Carrie Fisher dress all day.

And it was rough. Usually we have a larger booth, but since this was last minute we had to go with a smaller booth – normally we have 4 chairs and 3 people at the booth. This year we had 2 chairs and 4 people. So after 7 hours of standing on unpadded concrete, I was HURTING. I didn’t have to do any of the nighttime business stuff this year, so as soon as it was done I went back over to the mall area, bought 3 bath bombs for myself at Basin to soak in (one for each night), got Panda Express, and went back up to the room for the rest of the night. Both Tuesday and Wednesday night I let people give me sketch ideas on instagram so I kept myself entertained all night keeping up with the requests. It was really fun!

Wednesday was more of the same. More expo, more pain, another bath bomb, Panda Express, more drawing.

I REALLY thought Grumpy Cat was gonna be there. I was disappointed.

Atari had a booth.

This booth had PLINKO! The line was too long to mess with on the first day, so I went back as soon as the show opened Wednesday. A lady from the booth made an announcement to everybody in line that they were out of tablets to give away as prizes. I was like… I didn’t even know there were prizes. I just wanted to play Plinko. My pucks got stuck 3 times, LMAO. But I won a Price is Right bag. And apparently Drew Carey was there later in the day hosting Plinko. I didn’t go back over tho.

The booth where this was was giving away Pop Sockets with this ugly purple face on it. Turns out it was those Member Berries from South Park that drive me crazy LMAO. So I gave that to Chase.

Thursday was the last day, we got the booth down in record time, and then went to dinner with the bosses.
My last bath bomb was orange and had one of those little foam pellets in it that turn into an animal. I think it’s a cheetah?

Friday was another day of traveling back.

But I had nobody next to me the first leg!! So that was nice. I watched some of Deadpool before going to sleep for a while. Second flight, I watched part of “Three identical Strangers” which I didn’t get to finish – I figured I could finish it on some streaming service but it’s apparently nowhere for free. Bummer.

So yeah. 20 years of doing cons. Walking for miles in crazy shoes. I have NEVER hurt so bad during/after a show. I think I need to exercise more for a start. That should at least help in the future. I used to stand at work pretty much all day and now I sit all day. Gotta work on that.

2. Sewing! part 1
So I rushed to get Cinderella finished before I left for Vegas, since we were going to the Ren Faire Saturday the day I got back and I knew I wouldn’t have time to work on it before then… and I wanted to wear it!

I ended up taking the zipper out of the back and putting grommets in to help pull the waist in tighter.

The painted roses took forever to finish, the fabric paint dried SO slow, I ended up having to have a hair dryer plugged in next to me just so I could move onto the next thing.

My plan was to smock the gathered panel. I only got about 4 rows done Sunday night but it really helped tighten up the look.

I picked up this fabric at Joann on Sunday to use as a shawl.

Mom wants me to dirty it up a little, but it’s so pretty I wanted to leave it as is and wear it as a big scarf normally LOL. I think I may cut armholes into it. We’ll see.

3. Ren Faire

Saturday morning it was COLD 🙁 I tried to figure out something else I could wear but didn’t really have anything else appropriate that would be any warmer. So I just put on some rolled up jeans under my skirt, my quilted petticoat and braved it.

My parents went, too! We watched a few shows, the joust, and then got colder and it looked like rain was coming in so we headed on out.

Did get to say hi to these awesome people before we left tho!

And this happened. LMAO.

Went home, took a long nap and then got up and downloaded the pics of my costume off the real camera and…. OMG. It looked AWFUL ON ME!! I can’t believe I went out looking like that, I look like I weight 20lbs heavier.

4. Sewing, part 2
So Saturday night I put the dress back on and tried to figure out why this dress looked SO BAD. I knew I’d had a lot of fit issues just from using the pattern that was way too big, but I thought I’d fixed them all between sizing down, new darts, and switching to eyelets.

Turns out the biggest culprit is that it was still too big around the waist, even after taking the zipper out, removing some of the back width and putting the eyelets in. I was able to pin in darts on either side, around an inch each, and just pinning those parts in made a WORLD of difference. I also realized it needed another dart — or a full seam – in the back as well. So I realized I was going to have to take this thing apart and take it in.

I also made the agonizing decision to lose the gathered front panel. After all that work! But my instagram poll said not to use it, I should have listened to them, lesson learned.

SAD

But! I decided to just cut the panel in half and use it for the upper part. I got the new front panel assembled and sewn back into the front layer last night. It was a little wonky since it was REALLY awkward getting it sewn back in — since I couldn’t fully disassemble the dress with the eyelets in the back, I had to do what I could.

Next will be getting the new, much bigger darts sewn in, and the big princess-seam-like darts in the back. I also need to open up the armscye a bit.
I’m hoping to have it reassembled by the end of the week… and hopefully looking slightly better and not so tent-like.

5. Upcoming stuff!
Memphis Comic Expo is this weekend!
Chase is out of town. I’m going to take Kevin, I think Ash is going, and Lauren and her fam is going too! So that should be a fun time. I’m wearing Jean Grey.
I think I’m going to go back up on Sunday and help out at the 501st booth a bit. If I can get Leia put back together by then (I need to iron the interfacing into the collar, take up the sides, and close it back up), I’ll wear her. If not I’ll break out Amidala.
Then the next weekend is all kinds of Halloween stuff. Need to figure out what I’m doing.

6. DISNEY!
I HAVEN’T TALKED ABOUT DISNEY YET

We booked our Disney trip week before last!!!!! for next year obv.
And WE ARE STAYING AT THE POLY

And we are EATING AT VICTORIA AND ALBERTS

IS IT APRIL YET?!
I’ve also booked Yachtsmen Steakhouse, Beaches and Cream, Sanaa, Morimoto Asia, Tutto Italia, and Kona Cafe.

We’re not doing a package this time around, which bums me out a little because I like prepaying for our dining. But oh well, we’ll just save up for it.

I’m so exxxxxxxxcccccccccciiiiiiiiiited

7. Art
And now I have a massive art dump. Like I said in the Vegas section, I spent 2 nights just drawing stuff people yelled at me on instagram. So I have all those sketches to post!
Plus one concept art Padme from week before last.

This one was based on a black and white sketched concept piece, so I decided to make it green since she doesn’t really have a lot of green costumes otherwise.

And now onto the sketches. I had a lot of ghosting from other pages behind the scans — should have stuck a plain page between them — but oh well. Again, these are all things people asked me to draw on instagram!!

Pika-Thor

Spidey and BB-8 and an Ewok
I HATE drawing Spider-man’s mask with all the lines so I went with mask-less Peter Parker!
And Bb-8 and the ewok were two separate requests. I drew BB-8 first and then added an ewok friend later.