Crypticon 2009

Crypticon was pretty fun this past weekend. As you can see, the fairy Amethina made friends with Frankenstein! Though horror conventions wouldn't be the first place one would imagine my booth at, it went over pretty well and speaking personally, I enjoyed it because I do tend to like actual horror movies (not these goofy spoofs that you see all the time).

There were some pretty amazing actors and actresses there and I got the twins from Planet Terror to help me destroy a couple of pages in my "Wreck This Book" book. That is, it is a book intended to be pretty beat up and so they put their gum in it and drew circles all over one page. SO...amidst selling books I gawped at the actors and art.

Zombie Tools boys were there and it was good to see them after Miscon as well as Dreaming Comics & Games, Gargoyle's Statuary and a bunch of other awesome artisan friends! I really hope to see a lot more folk next year because the line-up this year was pretty impressive.

So I'm still not sure if All's Faire is going to be a go or not but the Greenwood Faire in Richland, WA is fast approaching, which I'll be at with my new booth curtains, courtesy of my neighbor and fellow etsyian Sterling Stiches. If you get a chance, stop by her store because she is the designer-creator of the most awesome reusable shopping bags in the world!

I've begun to package my fragrant inks now in new bottles which are dram sized (about the same as before, just a different shape actually) and have screw-on lids. This is better I feel because it makes storage and transport a bit more secure and lasting. I'll be discontinuing the regular non-scented inks too. There's just nothing unique about inks that are pretty much like most other inks out there - I want mine to be magical and inspirational so scented all the way.

Also, after reviewing a number of the various things I've made, I've decided that I am going to steamline my product a bit. I'd like to keep my books as much as possible to primarily fully handbound Glammeries, journals and spellbooks in general, followed by my Book Rescue Project books. I find that it is really satisfying to save the old, beaten books from final extinction in the recyle yard by recovering classics in new and interesting ways. It makes me feel a little better inside to know that they won't be joining the heaping mounds that Barnes and Noble and other similar booksellers throw away daily. It just kills me to think of them tearing off book covers and trashing their overstock when our very schools can't afford books for classrooms :(

Last, I think I'll keep doing the art journals but waning on those some because I want to pick up on the handmade paper (of which I have a lovely creamy batch with buttercups in the making). I am hoping to be able to refine this to making printer-friendly paper so that I can print on the handmade stationary. This will lend itself toward my eventual goal of being able to make and publish books that are *totally* handmade and bound.

Thanks to Tiffany from Nefaerious for listing me in her blog - check out her mini hats, (I got a mossy one to match my Absinthe Fairy outfit in the making!)