Wednesday, September 18, 2013

WorldCon

Well, that was big.

To be perfectly honest, I broke my one show sales record by a couple hundred dollars so I should be happy, but it's not as much as I was hoping for, given the expense involved. Venturing back home to Texas for a show reminded me that Fandom is not walled off from local culture. I was preparing for a Pacific Northwest show, with lots of claws and some hair pins and a particular jewelry mix, since that's what I was accustomed to, but it turns out that Texas fandom has different desires. I'm completely sold out of forged hair pins, both bronze and sterling, and could have sold more if I'd had them, but the great majority of my claw sales were to people from the PNW. This shows me that I need to do some more research into the fan culture in Detroit before NASFiC next year. Beyond that, I met a lot of interesting people and made a few new friends. I had a pretty good time, though I hardly got to Con at all. After the dealers room shut down, and I rested and ate, most of the panels were over. I did get to see the Masquerade, though, and that was fun.

I like my new booth setup quite a bit since I'm keeping so many  of the pieces in their tins all the time. It takes a little longer to set up and tear down, since all the display pieces have to come out of and go back into their tins, but I think it's worth it for the nice, slick look of the table.

The New Product for this convention (in the way that award badges/medals were developed at Norwescon) is Badge Lanyards. Pictures will be forthcoming in the next few days as I photograph and list the remaining pieces.

The Etsy and Artfire shops are back up, and will be slowly filling as I get caught up. There should be more hair pins in a day or two.

Next up: The Northwest Bead Society Bead Bazaar! October 5th-6th at the Hansen Conference Center at Comcast Arena in Everett, WA! This show will be almost exclusively buttons and findings (hooks/eyes, etc), so drop by and see what's come out of R&D this summer, along with a lot of handpaints and a little bit of cloisonné.