Summerfest and Gencon 2012 Recap

Been a while since I've been on here to post. The last couple weeks have been busy-busy-busy, what with the Bountiful Summerfest, followed up by Gencon in Indianapolis.

I wish I could get on here and rave all about how awesomely great the last 2 weeks were, and how all my hopes and excitements and expectations of the whole summer were fulfilled. I could do that... but that wouldn't be an honest representation. It would be sugarcoating events that didn't live up to what I was hoping they would, and what good is recording my thoughts and experiences if all I did was pretend they were all great?

So, I apologize in advance for the grumpy attitude. It's been a little rough on me here, without any real outlet or direction for that irritation.

Also... this is a VERY long post... so I hope you like reading!

As you all know, if you've been following my posts on Facebook, or reading my blog, Bountiful Summerfest was anticipated to be my big event of the year. It was my first real art festival.
 I spent... all summer preparing for it. I poured most of my shop's resources and supplies into preparing for it. I spent tons of money improving the look of my booth.
I skipped out on several weekend camping trips in order to spend time at the shop.
I put several large commissions on hold all summer so that I could devote all my free time to preparing for this one big event.

This was suppose to be my big break. The event where I would finally do really well at. I was anticipating huge crowds, lots of sales, possibly some commissions. I was anticipating and relying on this event to recoup all the money I'd spent over the summer preparing for it.

What I got instead... was stifling hot, muggy weather, followed by rains, and then burning heat. The crowds were anemic at best... not many people were there, and most of the ones who were, were either just window shopping or were spending money on cheap fluff.

I had been told that Bountiful Summerfest was suppose to be a really good art festival. And indeed, the festival itself was very nice. BDAC did a great job of setting it up. They were all very friendly and accommodating. The park was lovely, filled with trees so the vendors had plenty of shade. And there was tasty food and lots of water within easy reach. The other artists who attended were also wonderful. I met a lot of really friendly, really nice people who kept me company during those 3 days.

But as nice as everyone was... it doesn't make up for poor crowds. Indeed... even the other artists said that this year was very slow, and more then a few were hurting for sales.

You can imagine how... disappointing this was for me. I did make some fairly good sales and walked away with a small profit. But it wasn't anywhere near what I'd been expecting. What I was NEEDING it to be. As I said, I poured almost all of my resources into this event, anticipating making most, if not all of it back. I needed to in order to pay for the supplies I needed to start on my big commissions.

It did not make for a good ending to my week.

But, even though the crowds were small and sales were slow, the event had its good points.

As mentioned above, I met some really nice people while I was there. An artist across from me crafts silver jewelry and we spent much of the festival chatting (he had a pair of earrings I really liked, so I traded him my original Wise Luck Owl for the set).
The ladies next to him, who featured paintings, handcrafted drums and jewelry, gave me some good advice on displaying multiple forms of artwork.
Another jeweler down the way was selling some wonderful copper earrings that, had I had the money, I would've snatched up in an instant.
And another couple of ladies further up featured some of the prettiest, most decorative silverware jewelry I've ever seen (I ended up trading a flying pig for one of their fork bracelets).

I also got to know one of the food vendors there. It was a fish and chips and funnel cake booth run by a family, and their daughter absolutely fell in love with my mini flying pigs, and ended up buying one by the end of the festival.

I also ran into a pair of fellow gaming and geekery nerds on my first night, and we spent a long time chatting. They ended up purchasing a whole ton of stuff, which was awesome, and I may have found another gamer for our weekly RPG, as well as some fresh commissions.

And the coolest part of the festival... I won a ribbon! My booth was awarded a "Highly Recommended" ribbon for its awesome layout. And I must admit... I did a pretty good job! I am thoroughly pleased with how it all turned out.

Summerfest was a 3 day event. As soon as it was over, I was off preparing for my next voyage. Because that very next week, I was heading to Gencon in Indianapolis!

Gencon was not a business trip. Sadly, I did not have the money or inventory to attending Gencon as a vendor. Rather, I was attending as just another guest, accompanying my boyfriend and his podcast group, who were there as media covering the event. I haven't been to very many cons in my life, and Gencon is one of the biggest, so I couldn't pass up the chance to go and do that.

Like Summerfest, I had been looking forward to Gencon all summer long. I was excited for the huge crowds, the barrage of awesome cosplay costumes, all the vendors, the games, the events. And of course, being able to spend 3 days with my significant other as well, because this was his first major con too!

And though I wasn't a vendor, I made sure to bring along my Dragon Binder to show off, a stack of business cards to hand out, and I crafted an awesome little Iron Phoenix Dragon to perch on my shoulder. After all... I was attending a gaming convention! It just wouldn't be right if I didn't bring along some of my work to show off!

Unfortunately, it seemed some goblin of mischief tagged along with me, and was determined to turn what should have been a exciting trip into a series of mishaps, mistakes, and miseries.

Nothing seemed to go right for me this trip. Within an hour of leaving my house, part of my shoulder pauldron tore loose, and I didn't have the tools to fix it. I had a couple of my tools (I was gonna bring a pair of pliers, in case some part of my sculptures broke while I was there) confiscated by the airport because they were 'too long' to go on the plane. As soon as we arrived at the hotel and started to unpack, I accidentally caught my fluffy hat feather (the hat cost me $80 btw, I had gotten it from the ren fair in AZ) in the zipper, sucking a huge chunk of it into the zipper, and I was forced to rip it out in order to get it free.

It was not a good start to the trip.

The next day it was rise and shine at 6am (after going to bed late) so that we could get to the con on time. I decked myself out in my new shoulder dragon, my slightly mangled hat, and my Dragon Binder, all excited and looking forward to a great day of exploring and showing off.

Of course... as is often the way with me... I discovered, as we were walking to the con, that the new capris I had just bought were too big for me. Like... falling off my hips too big. And I had no belt. No safety pins. No nothing. This was not good. Unless I wanted to spend all day hiking my pants up, I would need to locate a belt, and fast. (I ended up buying a belt from the first vendor I came across. $30 for a plain, utterly boring leather belt. In hindsight, I should've searched a bit more and found something nicer. But at that point in time, I was desperate)

Well... we got to the con, and ended up parking 2 1/2 blocks away. We didn't know what door to enter into the building, and I ended up getting sent off to what I thought was the entrance, only to find out that, that entrance was just for vendors, so I had to back track. Then it was waiting in line to pick up all my passes and tickets. I got to show off my Binder a bit, and got lots of compliments on the dragon. Already the weight of that Binder was starting to get to me, and I began to wonder if bringing it was such a good idea...

The podcasters in the mean while, were off doing interviews. That first day was very busy for them, and there was rarely time for us to meet up. Which only made my situation worse, because they had the keys to the car, which was my only course of respite.

Have you ever had to spend all day carrying around 20-30lbs of dead weight? It's not fun. Especially when that 20-30lbs is hanging off of a single strap from your shoulder. My muscles burned. My joints hurt. My shoulders were absolutely killing me. My tendonitis was flaring up, making it harder to keep a firm hold of that binder. It felt like my arms were being ripped out of their shoulder sockets and there was no relief. The only time when I wasn't in constant pain was when I could sit down and rest. But I couldn't very well sit forever. And the keys to the car... oh, the wonderful, life saving car... was in the hands of my podcasting companions, who were all busy. At one point, they had to leave in order to pick up either other colleague from the airport and I wasn't able to catch them in time, so I was forced to wait even longer.

The pain of lugging around that massive piece of steel shit was pretty much consuming  every moment of thought at that point. I couldn't focus on anything beyond how much I hated that thing and how fucking BADLY I wanted to get rid of it.

You ever have those times where you are so miserable, so frustrated and angry, that every thought you have is punctuated by cursing and swearing? Yea... that was how my day was going.

FINALLY!!! I was able to get the car keys! Salvation was in sight!

But... they had interviews to do... and couldn't accompany me to the car... so off I went, carrying that horrific beast of misery for 2 1/2 blocks, my muscles screaming at me till I thought I might not be able to make it up there cuz my arms would give out. I finally made it to the parking garage... only to realize that I had no idea what level we were on. I ended up walking up and down the levels about 3 times before I finally located the car (this is AFTER I called to find out where it was parked). By this point I didn't give a flying rats ass about showing anything off, I just wanted it all gone. So everything got shoved in the trunk, and I made my slow way back to finish off the night. Which, also, didn't turn out as planned... since the workshop I'd signed up and paid for coincided with a special invitation only cocktail party that I had planned on attending with the BF. Try as I might, there weren't any other time slots available for any of the other workshops, so I had to skip the party (and never did get to show off the dress I bought for it, since I don't really own any decent clothes).
I did make a pair of scalemail bracers though. Which... I kinda screwed up on, and need to fix. I also made a pair of D6 gamer dice earrings.

I also forgot to grab my camera. So no pics that day.

Another late night followed by an early morning. Not much sleep going on during this trip, and after the previous day, I was dragging hard. But there were things to do, and seeing as they were my ride, I had to be up when they were.

This time, I brought only my dragon. I left the hat and the Binder at the hotel. The dragon, I figured, was small and light enough to not give me much issue. Plus... everyone freakin loved it. How could I not bring it??

On this morning we had the privilege of attending Tracy Hickmans 'Killer Breakfast'. It's a sort of live-action story telling, where Tracy sets up the scene, and the participants have to come up with inventive, funny, stupid, or courageous actions to deal with it. The whole goal is to keep Tracy entertained, otherwise you're 'killed off' and the next contestant takes your place.

Of course, everyone ends up dying at some point! But it was incredibly entertaining to watch, and I got a free T-shirt out of it!

As soon as that was over, I rushed off for my workshop of the day; "Build your Own RPG in an Hour". I was pretty excited about this one, thinking it was going to be some sort of constructive class where we'd build our own little adventure and learn tricks for doing it.

As it turned out... it was basically just 2hrs of brainstorming, where ideas were voted on by the class, and whatever was popular is what we rolled with. Which ended up being some sort of 'Roaring 20's featuring Mechs and Fighting Rings', using lego's that I had absolutely no interest in whatsoever. Total waste of $6 and 2hrs.

Once that finished up, I headed back to the vendor room to begin what would become something of an epic journey for me. You see, this year Dungeons and Dragons were revealing info for their 5th edition. And to commemorate this, they had a special, limited edition, Drow-themed dice set you could collect by doing a series of events.

Personally, I didn't find the dice all that exciting looking. But, I decided that I was going to go for it. I would collect the whole set!

This turned out to be quite a significant challenge... one that would consume most of my free time. I spent a loooot of time sitting around, waiting to get into the events. Since I wasn't signed up for them, I had to buy general tickets and then sit around and HOPE that a spot would be available.

It was during this waiting that my period decided to start up. Middle of the day, at the convention center, with no feminine products on me.

Awesome.

Thank you stupid body for adding insult to injury. Few things irritate a woman more then having their period start up in the middle of vacation in an inconvenient place. Especially a vacation already fraught with mishaps.

I ended up missing my other lecture that day so that I could sit around and try and get those 2 dice. I finally finished up by roughly 5pm when BF and company contacted me. Seemed they'd been having a rough day as well and wanted to get out of there and relax.

Now... here is where my bad day got even worse. I was already in a pretty foul mood, so after we picked up dinner and some beers (they all drink), we headed back to the hotel. Apparently everyone EXCEPT me had brought swim suits. It hadn't even occurred to me. So while they all tromped off to go swimming and sit in the hot tub, I got to sit in the hotel room and take a shower. Then they came back, broke out the beers and a new game and proceeded to have a roaring good time getting drunk and attempting to win their little taverns the most prestige and gold.

I, meanwhile, sat huddled up on the bed cuz they had the A/C cranked up and I was freezing. I worked on putting together my 2nd scalemail bracer (since I hadn't finished it), forcing myself to stay awake, even though my vision didn't want to focus and I was forcing my hands to stay steady. I was really frikkin tired and just wanted to sleep. I don't drink. The game is set up for only 4 people. And I was so tired and cranky, I didn't even want to play. I would've been no fun.

I don't blame them for wanting to relax and blow off some steam. But their blowing off steam was making my night really miserable, and short of getting angry and being a snarly bitch, I had no way of venting that frustration.

That was a very long, late night. Followed yet again by an early morning.

Again... I forgot my camera. Again. So no pictures the 2nd day either.

Third day: My Mission: Find my Uncle Kenneth!

I had received word from my dad the previous day that my Uncle Ken was at Gencon! And so, determined to find him, I spent a good chunk of the morning trying to track him down before heading to my chainmail workshop (yea, I signed up for quite a few of these. Figured if I had something to do, I wouldn't get stuck sitting around bored).

This turned out to be harder then I expected, and eventually resorted to calling my grandma to get my uncles phone number so I could call him. But once I did, I swung by and said hi, showed off my shoulder dragon and my Dragon Binder (yes, I brought it with me that day. But only for a little while to show him).

Part way through the day, I hooked up with one of the podcast cohorts and we made a trip out to the car to unload the days shopping (or in my case, my Binder), and then it was back to the con.

With the day mostly over, a workshop still to go, and a short list of interviews, I knew I was running out of time to get my last dice.

And so, after picking up the supplies to build a Scalemail Dice Bag, I skipped out on the rest of the workshop so that I could devote that time to the last 2 dice events. To my horror, I discovered that the last 2 events, one 1hr long and the other 2hrs, were going to take significantly longer then I had thought. And with the podcast crew planning on finishing up between 5-6, I didn't have 4-5hrs to devote to this!

Starting to feel a bit panicked and worried, I explained to the girl overseeing the game room what my situation was. If I'd had the time to do both events, I would've totally sat there for the wait and gotten them done. But time was not on my side, and neither was my ride home.

Luckily, she was very nice, and after agreeing to do the 1hr event, she said she'd give me both dice.

Score!!

And so, I was able to complete my set! In the end, I spent around 6-7hrs, and $8 attaining it ($12 if you include the 2 tickets I didn't get to spend). And of our little group, I was the only one to do it.

I also got to stomp a snotty teenager into the ground playing a round with the new Underdark miniatures. He was being a cocky snot, expecting an easy win against me. Thus, he blew everything he had in the first round trying to kill my Drider. I ended up losing a bunch of moral in order to save my minion, but it was worth it.

At that point, the kid gloves came off.

I'm usually a pretty nice player in games, not being a particularly competitive person. But if someone's gonna go and try and screw me over right off the bat, getting all cocky expecting an easy win against a girl... well... I wasn't going to take that lying down.

I proceeded to trick him into wasting his one defensive card on a minor attack, then destroyed his hound. His spider quickly followed. His Drow was too far out of range, but the deaths of his minions had cost him too much moral and he couldn't summon any more. I meanwhile, had summoned up 2 more minions, hadn't lost any, and would've slaughtered his remaining forces if we hadn't run out of time.

Our GM said that, that was the first time he'd seen anyone win by killing off the others forces. hahaha. Though 'technically' the fight had ended in a tie, with both of us having 7 moral. But I pretty much considered myself the winner in that case.

By this point the podcasters had finished up for the day so I joined them. I was pretty tired at this point, my feet hurt, and I had some feminine things that needed taking care of. And of course, I had forgotten to bring said feminine things with me *facepalm*.

The guys though... having been busy most of the con, wanted to look around now that they were done. So off we went, giving the vendor room one last look-through. Then it was outside to wander around downtown for a bit, checking out the big monument and the motorcycle rally going on. We eventually made our way to a sports bar to eat dinner, where we encountered a rather unusual food.

Ever seen a deep fried hamburger? Well, now you have!

I was in the mood for pasta, so I ordered this Asian, Chicken Meatball, Spicy-something Pasta. It wasn't as good as I was expecting... a little too tangy, and a little too spicy. But still good.

My feet really needed the rest, because they were really killing me. So sitting down for a while to eat was great.

And then, it was off to the hotel to get packed up and ready to leave.

On this day I actually remembered to bring my camera!! Sadly, I was so busy all day, I didn't have time to really get pics of anything. Couldn't find any big Gencon banners to stand next to. No pics from the D&D booth. All I managed was the one pic of me with the big green balloon dragon, some images of the monument, and the above hamburger *sighs*.

On the plus side, we did see a black chicken limo on the way back to the hotel.

Best. Limo. Ever.

4:30am, Sunday morning.

I had gotten maybe 4-5hrs of sleep. But, our flight was at 8am, so off we went.

As I'm sure you've noticed, I've pretty much spent most of this trip in a stupor of grumpy. I was very much ready to go home and have the whole thing over and done with.

Of course, the mischief goblin decided to make one more hit on me before I could make it to the safety of home. Airport security confiscated my tube of hair gel because it was 'too big'. The same gel I've brought on planes and traveled with before without an issue. The nice, salon hair gel that I'd bought around a year or so ago and wasn't even close to finishing.

That... really urked me.

Yea, I was SO done with this place.

In the end, Gencon ended up being a mix of good and bad. I did have quite a bit of fun. The throngs of people and the costumes were fun to see. The vendors room was full of amazing things. The D&D events, while time consuming, were fun to play. I got to see my uncle, chat with some acquaintances, spend some time with the BF, get a limited edition set of dice, handed out all the remainder of my business cards, and received tons and TONS of compliments on my dragon.

Seriously... I'm pretty sure I caused more then a few cases of whiplash. That Iron Phoenix Dragon... he was pimp. Everyone loved him.

But Gencon was also full of a lot of bad things, miserable things, mistakes and frustrations. So I'm left feeling disappointed and irritated, not sure if the trip was a good one or not.

At least I got some souvenirs... I guess.... 

All in all... it was not how I was expecting those 2 weeks to go. This was suppose to be the highlight of my year. I was going to Gencon! My first art festival! I was finally going to have a huge success with my art! I was gonna geek out at one of the biggest gaming/fantasy/scifi con's in the USA! I was gonna enjoy my geekdom with my BF, and I was so excited for the great things they were going to accomplish with their podcast!

And while they did indeed have a wonderful time... well... I can't quite say the same sadly. One big disappointment on top of another has left me feeling pretty drained and unhappy with all the time and energy I wasted preparing for these events.

This should've been an amazing 2 weeks. Instead... it's just a huge, frustrating disappointment.

But, I suppose such things happen and you live and learn and move on. I definitely learned that I'm just not going to attend conventions with them anymore. Or if I do, then I'm going to acquire my own car, and if necessary, my own room. That way I'm not forced into their schedules and they're not forced to wait on me.

I also have a much clearer idea of the kind of events I need to be aiming for next year.

Now... it's 2am. I've been writing this for about 3hrs now. I think it is time to head to bed.