The Tale of San Japan 4TW

And hence another convention comes to a close all to soon. I'm probably going to spend to rest of the week tired and mopey as already miss the world of over priced merchandise and loud fangirls. And, yes, that's a good thing. Haha. Welp, I guess I'll be starting with Thursday since that's where our adventures begins.

Thursday
Well, I left the homestead around 11:00am Thursday and we picked Croweh up on the way. Her and I chattered as we headed up on what seemed like an endless ride to San Antonio. We arrived in the city around 2:30, so we spent the rest of the afternoon wandering about and making new friends. When our friend Aza got there we hung out with her and her friend and helped her work on last minute cosplay. Around 9:00 we went to get our badges, and then the day came to a definite close as we excitedly rested our heads and slept until the next day came.

Friday
I awoke early on Friday and threw Toph on. I've said it before, Toph gets so much love! I think it's cause Avatar cosplays are rare in general and Toph is the best. Croweh debuted her Axel cosplay. Anyways, we got up way before the convention started and helped an artist friend of ours set up. I then bought a couple things from her when the artist alley legally opened. We derped around until Aza found us as Finland and we hung out with her for the duration of the day. We went to the Cosplay Group panel, which was pretty funny really. We met some new friends. I got to give Malindachan and Ex-shadows yet another gift that I made for them.(causeI'mcreepylikethat) The day seemed to blur together until that night. We went to masquerade, it wasn't as nice as the one at AM, but I got to dance with someone who I had wanted to and it was lovely.(andawkwardwut?)

Saturday
On Saturday I wore Claire and Croweh wore Olette. We hung out with Cosplay in America until the Video Game Cosplay Contest opened. We signed up and went to the mall to get pictures for her. We went on down to Cosplay Chess to see Aza kick some ass as the Queen of Hearts. We met a really nice Rosette while hanging in the wings. After that we did a shoot of Aza and her minions. Which was then followed by ANOTHER shoot for me as we went down to the parking garage. When we came back up, we went to the in attempt to get more pictures for Aza, but almost got in trouble with mall security so I suggested just going back to the con, because I didn't want to get in any trouble. We went to the dealers room for some shopping and I bought a panda plushie that I had been eyeballing all day Friday. We went to the AMV contest and left early to eat hotel food. It was SO COLD in the AMV contest room, I was shaking when I got out. I was also starving at the time so....yeah. We waited around for lineup for the cosplay contest. The line was endless and tiring, but so worth it. Although by this point in the day I had a headache, so lots of things got on my nerves. Anyways, after the contest ended, so did Saturday. We went back up to the room, I took some advil, showered and went to bed with the song from the Nostalg*a Cosplay skit in my head.

Sunday
Mainly last minute spending and other things, no panels or cosplay. Found some of our new friends and said goodbyes before leaving. Every time a convention ends, I feel a whole in my heart that I can't fill up until the next convention.

ANYWAYS! It was great to see everyone and meet new friends and meet some of my subscribers!
Until next time!
~Sana-san

Road Blocks and Stress and Secrets, Oh My!

Thought I'd be cheesy for the sake of cheesiness.  But in all seriousness, I regret to inform that due to money complications, I won't be able to finish Rikku for SanJapan. This where you all frown and go "Awwww!" And on the note of not doing stuff, we, meaning the whole group, have decided to cancel our Nadesico cosplay due to stress and other things like that. We might do them eventually, but it'll be a long while from now. So, this might get you to saying, then what the heck are you gonna cosplay at SanJapan?! Well....Croweh suggested Pokemon, buuuut, while that may be all good for her, I honestly dislike wearing my May cosplay. It's all baggy on me and I don't like using my own hair because it's too long and plus I've been wanting to redo basically the entire thing.[Don't hate me Croweh! ] So I've been considering a few things. The first being wearing either Kagura or Toph, I've never had the right hair for Toph, so it wouldn't be any different if I were to put my hair into a pony tail for her. As for Kagura, now that I think about it, maybe not for one of the same reasons as May, it's kinda big on me. But not so big that it doesn't work unlike May, actually I just tried it on and it looks kinda cute....so yeah, there's that option. The second idea I had was just to kick it nerdy Otaku street style. As I like to call it. A while ago I did a reconstruction of a shirt I didn't wear and put pieces of an FullMetal Alchemist shirt shirt on it, and I really don't get to wear it often enough. I have some other cute pieces that I could put it with(I have the outfit in my mind as I type). Not really exciting, so I'd probably play photographer for the day, but I'd at least be comfortable, hehe....yeah. Another one that I thought of was throwing together another decora outfit, which would probably look better due to having more hair accessories and cuter skirts. That's basically all I could think up. I'm going to put a poll up with those decisions, and it'll be open for a couple of weeks. Also feel free to comment with any suggestions.
That would be for Friday though. As for Saturday, I came up with something that I could easily whip together in a month. BUT! I'm not gonna tell you guys what it is. Why? Because surprises are fun. I might wait to even give any hints until I'm done. I won't be starting until I get payed(well, half payed. Long story, ain't gonna talk about it) for my friends Hungary cosplay commission though. Which will hopefully be before the week is out, but we'll see. But I am pretty excited about the new secret cosplay I'll hopefully do, and the convention altogether(I get too see all my con friends again! Yay!! 8D)

Anyways! I look forward to hearing any input from yous gais!
Until next time,
Sana

Slight Cosplay Hiatus. Until Further Notice.

I'm gonna try to make this as not whiny as possible.

Well, to put it simply, life is hard. It's hard for a lot of people I have no room to complain about anything. But the truth of the matter is, I have no money, actually, I have negative money. I owe myself money. And I keep thinking and I can't believe it's come to this. I'm going to finish Ryoko, and I'm going to finish Rikku. But I after I finish them, I really don't know when I'll make any new cosplays again. Sigh. It really makes me want to cry to admit that I've bitten off more than I can chew with this. Actually, scratch that, I did cry. I sobbed for several minutes straight after coming to this realization that nothing goes according to plan. What I mainly need to say is I'm not gonna do anything new for a long while. I need to get a job, pay myself back, pay my sister back as I also owe her money and then I can think about making new cosplays again. I've also decided to take some TNT to my cosplay "schedule". I've decided it to be simpler to just make cosplays as they come and not put a specific due date on them, I think it'll keep my hair from turning white and my face from breaking out much longer. So in saying that, if I don’t finished Rikku by San Japan, although that would be ideal for me, I won’t cry, I’ll suck it up, and wear something else. I’ll be able to finish her by Matsuri next year. I’m going to have to stop making promises to both myself and my watchers/subscribers/etc. because I have a way of breaking said promises, and it makes everyone sad. I've also been having a lot of inner drama, and it's been difficult for me to stop being hard on myself.


So, don’t expect seeing anything about my Yuni or Selphie cosplays anytime cause goodness knows when those will be happening. Especially Selphie because I’ve yet to actually play Final Fantasy 8. Yeah.

And to awkwardly wrap all of this up, I need to point this out, mainly to myself. Cosplay maybe the greatest thing in your(my) life, but you(I) need to always remember that life always comes first. You can put the construction of a costume on hold, but life ain't gonna stop or even slow down for you(me), and if you(I) look away for a second, it's gonna hit you(me) like a speeding train.


I hope no one's mad at my broken promises,
Love,
Sana

Summer Conventions Update Primarily Based Around SanJapan

So, I've decided that, unfortunately, I'm only going to San Japan for the summer primarily due to the fact that I've yet to get a job, and  the place I'm going to apply at is hiring when Delta H Con is going on. Much sadness, indeed, but it will be alright as San Japan is like the prom of conventions.

While I'm on that subject, I'd like to mention I offered to help spread the word about San Japan because I believe that it deserves help, and I think that EVERYONE in the world should because it's that great. Anyways, a while back they put up a post on Facebook saying that they got a butt load of postcards and posters that they needed help distributing all over the state. Them being my favourite convention I was happy to help, they told us to send our address to this one email as well as our t-shirt size saying they were gonna give us a shirt as compensation, which was all cool. So I get a package in the mail the other day and I open it and I'm like "Holy-!" I was expecting a good handful of postcards and a t-shirt. I got three times as many postcards(I'm gonna be a busy woman! I'm so excited to distribute them honestly), the shirt, three bumper stickers, and a cosplay show dvd from last year. Wha?! Yeah, I was a little shocked. But...yeah, I love this con. And I hate saying so more after I got free stuff(at least I think the stuff is for me and not more advert), but it was seriously the best con I had ever been to. Everything started on time(in exception of the rave, but that was due to tear-down and set-up time in the main events room), it has an ever-growing variety of events that doesn't just reach out to anime fans, an awesome list of guests, and is just made of awesome. When I went to Japan Festival a while back I met a guy that knew the people that started this con and he talked about how San Japan is an attendee-based convention, versus being a profit based one. And it definitely shows. Everyone we met on staff when we went last year was uber nice aaaaand do any of you guys know any other conventions that have a three-year long Dealers Room waiting list? I don't. Also, their artist alley sold out within half an hour this year I believe. The ones who've been there know, this is a good con, and I think it's just gonna get better.  I say, if you'd be able to go, go. It's a well worth it convention to me.

Well, now that I'm done seemingly bragging about this, if you're interested. The convention is held in San Antonio, TX from August 5-7. Their website is San-japan.org

Enough of this shameless advertisement then, til next time!
Love,
Sana

Summer To-do List

Yet another non-cosplay related blog. Sorry for posting so many of these! >_< Anyways, summer has finally begun for me down here. And every summer for the past three(I think) summers I've made a "to-do" list. It usually comprises of 20-ish items that I need/want/should do that summer. And my goal for the summer is to accomplish at least 50% percent of them. Thus far I've actually not been able to achieve that goal*headdesk*, but I'm hoping this summer will be different. As usual.
Anyways, onto to more pressing matters, zhe leest!

- Get a job
- Make Ryoko
- Make FF Cosplay
- Make Jenni's Hungary Cosplay (for money+her soul)
- Make Plushies for me
- Do Plushie Commissions
- Buy a new wig for Toph
- Buy fabric for Taiwan
- Go to Delta H Con
- Go to San Japan
- Loose more weight
- Buy wig for Yuni
- Buy wig for Selphie
- Get five more youtube subscribers
- Get five more bloggers followers (Hey, a girl can dream.)
- Participate in my first (real) Cosplay Contest
- Host another Cosplay Picnic
- Buy my first lolita dress
- Make some Cosplay Music Videos (Yes, I'm at that level of dorky)
- Make more friends within the Cosplay community. (Yeah, I know that one's kinda sad and embarrassing, but to be honest, I'm kind of socially awkward and don't have very many friends in Cosplay-land aside from the ones I knew before cosplay[Love you guys BTW! >-<])
- Ensure everyone that that last one was not a lame cry for attention
- Get more photoshoots done (Good or not, I need more pictures. Plus they're fun as heck.)
- Make sure to fun in all of this totally hard work. >3<

Yeah, it's got a random amount of silly things in there as it commonly does, but I personally think it's a good idea to set a good amount of goals for yourself, even when on vacation or break. Or.....maybe that's just my need to be semi-productive talking. If anyone else makes a summer to-do list, I would totally love to see it! I'm really excited about summer starting, and I hope it'll be better than ever!

Much love!
Sana ^_^

Project Plushie: Gilbirds

Time for a non-cosplay related blog!

So I've been wanting to make myself, as well as a friend mine, a Germany Gilbird for quite some time now. I've been boggled as to what method to go about doing so, but I finally formulated one that I'm content with. I gave my friends hers and it makes me unconrtrolably happy knowing how much she loves it. After that I was even happier to hear three of my other friends ask to commission some from me. I can't really say how happy it makes me to feel appreciated. ^_^

More of the Gilbirds:

This is the first of a ton load of plushies that I really want to make this summer. If I get better I was thinking about taking commissions, but knowing my experience with commssions, I'm not sure yet.

Wear Cosplay to Starbucks After Math

Relatively short post is gonna be relatively short.
Sadly, Bells couldn't come with us. Croweh and I decided on our Pokemon cosplays for convenience and so we wouldn't get arrested. So we went to the Starbucks in our mall and Croweh got some beverage and we walked around the mall. We went to GameStop and our favourite GameStop person got really excited and took a picture of us. We magically ran into some other cosplayers that had the same idea as us. Two groups in fact. Yays! We actually didn't get to many mean looks or comments and I think I remember seeing a kid get really excited over seeing us.

We successfully made friends and walked around with them until we went home. And by made friends I technically mean only one person willing to give us their facebook to stay in touch.

And that's the basis of my May 1st. Not much else. Ah well! Til next time!

Love,

San