Cherry City Comic Con Almost crashes, Saved by John Roach

Recently I was gearing up for a local convention, Cherry City Comic Con. I was very excited to go, but the con, from it's beginning, has had issues.

A simple search brings up many posts about last year. Still I had many friends go and do very well as vendors so my friend and writer over at http://octokittycrafts.blogspot.com/ talked me into going this year. We were going to do both of the eventsthe coordinator had set up, the craft fair and the con. We were both looking forward to them as well.

A week before the craft fair was scheduled we got a message saying it was cancelled. Unfortunately, I didn't screen grab any of that. I had a hunch we should have exited stage left at that point, but I really wanted to do a con and a home one is very good for us so I stuck to it with my friend and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Eventually we discovered this up on the Cherry City page. Mark has a tendency ot promise many things it seems, but never comes through with them. It is quite possible he's having trouble. Paypal isn't always easy to work with. If enough claims are made it does lock down, but still this was rediculous. Apparently some vendors received refunds, but only half for the craft fair. Others hung on for the con.

Anyway, my friend who paid for both events, and i paid through her, never got a refund for the craft fair from the guy. Its possible he only gave refunds to a few people, but no one's confirmed anything. She was far more accepting and friendly to him than I would have been through this whole situation.

Anyway, we kept working and planning in the hopes of making the loss up at the con.

You know where this is going don't you, dear reader?

Yep. It collapsed too.

Of course, just like last time, No one ever got the mentioned refunds.

Then this post went up which led to his rampage and attack on a personal friend before ripping all the posts and links down soon after:
http://koin.com/2014/12/29/vendor-from-canceled-craft-fair-wants-refund/

"Cherry City Comic Con is dead. A big thank you to those who sought to have it end. Your wish has been granted. After watching the farce that was the news I contacted the interested buyer and told him what happened and after his conversation with his business partners we both agreed that there was no coming back after the ignorant reporting done by Tim Becker who didn't contact me till 11am today offering me "a chance to respond, and if possible sit down for a quick interview with me to explain what the situation is." which is a little fucking retarded to air a story without all the facts but hey, it's the news, right? I'd also like to thank the fairgrounds for stating that they had no record of wither events even though I have email documentation that shows there was knowledge and wayne Petersen the contact at the fairgrounds called Tony's Kingdom and told him the event would not happen unless I paid a $10k deposit. Didn't bother calling me, mind you. Called Tony...
My PayPal account really did get locked up. I can't even access it now. So PayPal steals close to $5k and I'm just fucked!
My life is over. CCCC was all I had to live for. I was going to use the profits to get the craft fair people paid back, move myself and my wife to the beach to start a new life and now it's all gone. I have answered every message I've received and even though I have no way of paying people back I was trying to make sure that the artists and vendors would get an event to vend at and Salem would still have a good con to go to.
I have documentation and proof of all of the above so if you witch hunting scavengers want it, just ask.
All I can do is apologize. I have nothing else now. It's all gone.
Oh, and John Rogers, fuck you."

For a long time we figured we were screwed. This is one of the darker sides I've learned about vendoring. People can and will just take off with your money. And there will be people to defend those asses too.

Thankfully there was a huge stroke of luck and a very ambitious young man took over the fiasco before it passed. John Roach took over the con. In 4 months he revived the con, spoke with many of the vendors and got them settled, managing to completely book all the vendor spaces, got in many celebrity guests that Mark didn't even bother trying to get, The list goes on.

I saw him quite a few times going around to various small craft fairs advertising the show. Thats how we met him the first time, at a small local craft show. One of those little grandma shows. I don't think I'd ever see Mark at anything like that. It was refreshing.

To me it shifted a lot of my hatred of the event. Before I met them I was fully willing to work the event because we were being forced to, but I was gonna wear a shirt blasting the event and let everyone know about the crap Mark had done. I'm not usually a justice warrior but this whole situation had me fuming for months.

So, I was blessedly thankful to meet John and talk with him. He happily took time to talk with us about how we had been treated and how it could be fixed. Then to see all the hard work he put into the con itself. Even at the con he was working hard and deserves a ton of praise and credit.

All I can say is thank you to John for rescuing this con and giving us another local Salem event. I look forward to any events you do in the future.

For the record this was never meant as a blast at Mark. I merely posted all this info to inform others of how cons can go sometimes.

And seriously, John, you were a life saver for that Con. Thank you for taking it over.

Dystopian Guns

Nerf Mods.

Everyone does them after some point of playing with those addicting little guns; either because a gun breaks down, or out of curiosity, or because a friend did it before and showed it off.

This week I'm only focusing on the painting of one, but you can go inside a nerf gun and mod the bejeebus out of their guts to make them fly faster, longer, hit harder, etc.

Painting a nerf gun is....well fairly simple.

Figure out a color theme. Do a base coat of black or white, or whatever you want your base color to be. Most of these are black. I have a plan for a white based one and a blue based one but that's i nthe future.

After that all it takes is fuguring out what colors will go where. I use P3 acrylic paints for painting small figures, but any acrylic works.

This key is a precise hand, and working slowly. Otherwise you get sloppy spots.

You will need:
A nerf gun. Find one from goodwill. Thats where I got most of my bases.
Paints-Acrylic, and a base coat. I just used the cheapest spray paint i could find.
Paint brushes, etc

This was one of two I painted up for Dystopia Rising. (I kinda wish I had kept it. I really liked the design. Now I'm keeping an eye out for another of this type)

This was the second long rifle I painted. It comes in 4 parts. This is the middle secontion with the clip in.

The long rifle is all togethere here. I Think I was still adding touches here and there as I put it together to get the colors to flow better.

This was a bow I did a long time ago. One of the crappy rebel bows. I used a different type of paint, on that cracks and has texture because I wanted it to look old a rusty.

This one is to show that you need to make sure you get your base coat in all the nooks and crannies. I missed the bullet slots a bit and the orange showed through.

The roses and both of these were done by a friend who is an amazing artist.

Another smaller bow that never really got used unfortunately. The little sigils said somethign but I don't recall now. lol.

And finally the rifle I did for my husband. he played a strain called a Murican. As the name suggests they tend to be very...patriotic, annoying, lod, etc. Typical American really. They paint their stuff with the old red, white, and blue so his gun is a little...flamboyant

Overall, these can be very fun if you're just painting. Working on the inner guts can be very aggrivating if you're new to it. I lost a few guns when I firsted started. 

Also to note!! All Nerf Guns Must have an Orange Tip as per the laws so that cops don't mistake them for real guns.

Feel free to always ask questions, comments, etc. I'm always up for a chat.

And never forget. If you don't try you won't find out if you can do something cool. Errors will happen. Don't fear them, just learn from them.

Making Molds Round 1

Hello Everyone! I'm so sorry I've been absent for so long. I hope you weren't waiting too long. There are tons of great bloggers for crafts out there.

However, today I'm doing a post on making molds. There are many different ways to do this, but I'm doing silicone ones.

This is one of the myriad of videos I followed to make my putty with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aElFs2XsOHo

A quick search on youtube will bring up many more. It's fine to use one you're more comfortable with.

My ingredients/tools are:
Dap silicone100% silicone. It has to be 100% or things go wrong
Corn starch and a binder
oil. veggie oil is suggested, but i used penut oil. seemed to work the same
a tub to mix them in
and a mixing implement.
Things to make molds of
some sort of coloring agent if you don't want them to be white.

Now then. first a formost wear GLOVES! This crap is sticky. I probably did this round wrong, severly wrong. I also got the wrong color of silicone.

If you look closely my molds are cracking. I don't know where it went wrong but the drying process went really fast. That's not good when you wanna make a lot of molds.

Overall this is going to be a few parts post. At least untill I get this right. Not everything works out the first or even second time.

So keep an eye out as i try again.

Comments, questions, advice are always welcome. :)