Thankfully, this was actually the first time in the three years I've gone that there WASN'T a tornado- so yay. XD Gotta admire them for being prepared though.

ANYWAY. Back from St. Louis! Gotta say I had a BLAST. There were so many great people and great cosplayers this year, it was impossible not to have a good time! That is of course, unless you're an incurable grouch, in which case you don't count. XD

FRIDAY: Got there at a reasonable time and quickly changed into my shinigami Rukia (which I'm happy to say is WAY better than my first attempt back in '07, my god have I really been doing this 5 years?). There were quite a few more Bleach cosplayers there than usual for some reason- I even ran into practically all of Squad 13 at one point! (yes, I did indeed get to hug my captain- yay.) My waraji that I made from scratch held up really well all weekend, and I got a lot of compliments on them when people found out I had made my sandals myself. ^^ After wandering the artist alley and dealers room a bit- we found this booth who was making the CUTEST plushies ever right then and there for only $7. They had all sorts already made, but they let me put in a custom order and had him ready for me the following morning:


GAZE UPON TINY GANJU SHIBA IN ALL OF HIS ADORABLE BOAR RIDING CUTENESS. GAZE UPON HIM I SAAAAAYYYYYYYYY.
The name of the folks who make these is Project Hysteria and here is their FB page- check them out! [link]

*cough*

Saturday:  Crow came out of retirement for a little bit- because it had been a while and..... well, we had some Woodchuck Cider. XD


Behold, the return of boozehound Crow! (it's totally cannon, shut up)

So I sat at the table with Katherine as an orange haired retard for most of the morning helping her sell hats and selling my Cutie Mark phone danglies. ^^ Then around 1 I had to head back to the hotel room and change into Ash Ketchum to help my friend Lindsey in the Masquerade. She made the most adorable Lapras costume and needed a trainer. X3


Pictured above: Lapras got thirsty waiting to go onstage. XD

She ended up getting best mascot. Hooray!

Later than night after closing up the booth in Artist Alley, I changed back into Rukia and went to this awesome thing called the drink and draw. X3 Basically they had a cash bar set up and you sat around with other con goers just relaxing, throwing back a few drinks and drawing whatever. It was a really fun event. I had myself a glass of Jim Beam and just started doodling in my giant sketchbook- proving to everyone in the room that Rukia can SO draw. XDDDD


Samples of Ruki doodles. XD There are WAY more, but these showed up the best when I snapped photos of them.

Ended up hanging out at a table with ~Icolor4fun and chatted about his con, Cosplacon, which is happening next summer and will be amazing. Also met the awesome ~Commisama and doodled her up a Sonichu. XD She drew me an awesome headshot of Ganju in exchange! Woooo random doodle trades! Then I realized it was midnight and I didn't have a roomkey, so I hightailed it back to the hotel so I could get in the room that night. XD

Sunday: LAST DAY! I was Rukia yet again as it was comfortable and I was really enjoying making people chuckle at my bad drawings. ("OMG YOU DRAW JUST LIKE HER, THAT'S SO FUNNY" XDDD Comments like this were common and made me smile) I sat at the table all day and sold more pony charms- ended up selling OUT of Rainbow Dash.   Made a decent amount of money this weekend considering I wasn't really trying. X3 Though next time I think I'll set up a little "Have your portrait drawn by Rukia" spot for like $1 or $2 and see how many bites I get- that could be hilarious. Everything started really wrapping up around 3, and we ended up leaving the con at about 5. All in all, a really fun, stress free, DRAMA free weekend! What a con SHOULD be. I wish they all went this smoothly!

Also really looking forward to the Cosplacon meetup this summer! There were quite a few folks who couldn't make it to AStL for various reasons that I would have loved to hang out with who I'll be able to see there! Brad and I will probably even head down a day early just so we can get some decent hang-out time in anyway, since we never get to see these guys anymore. X3

Hope everyone else who went enjoyed the con as much as I did!

Stay frosty. ;D