I made it to Dragon*Con for the first time this year. I have to say, it was a lot of fun, but boy was it crowded. Four hotels worth of people is a lot. I met cool new people, got to hang out with people I don't see often, and saw some people I hadn't seen since high school. I ended up wearing four different costumes, too. You can check out all my pictures from the con at
my Flickr. I will be returning next year, but I do have to say that this is probably not my favorite convention, simply because I did find it too busy for my tastes, and I'm not into most of the fandoms there (Star Wars, Harry Potter, Firefly, Dr. Who). But regardless, I bought a ton of crap. The dealer's room is my favorite place no matter what con I'm at. Of course, the room was biased toward sci-fi/fantasy, with tons of leather goods, corsets, jewelry, dice, tabletop games, Cthulhu, etc. Again, I'm not into that stuff, which kind of limited my selection. I ended up buying 3 small toys, which I think are quite cute.
The two colorful ones are from a series called "Wish Come True." Apparently these are designer toys from a company called
Friends With You. They even have little videos made for the characters. The fun thing about the toys is that they're like Weebles, they rock but don't fall over, plus they have a little jingle bell inside them. I have to admit, I can't really decide if they are altogether cute or a little creepy. They get mixed reactions.
If I find more, I'll continue to collect them. There's only six in the series. I like how colorful they are, and I really want Mr. TTT-He looks like a rainbow caterpiller. The other little toy I got was from a collection called "Cannibal Funfair." An interesting enough concept for me to buy one (plus, they were really cheap). I should mention that all these toys were in blind boxes, so I couldn't pick which one I wanted, I could only hope for the best. I have never cared for blind boxes, but I went ahead and tried my luck on these. Anyway, I ended up with Rolo, a little cannibal elephant.
He's holding two sausages of what I can only assume to be elephant meat. The description says "They are a friendly bunch despite their love for eating people." I should point out, though, that cannibalism is the act of eating members of one's own species, not the act of eating humans. I have no idea why he has two extra feet, or why his nipples are pierced, but an interesting little figure nonetheless. There's 12 in this series, and I only find one or two of the others cute, so I doubt I'll continue to collect these. I will continue to look for other fun toys at the upcoming conventions, though! Two more to go this year!
Exciting news! I just got engaged to the most wonderful man ever. Other exciting news! We just started a business together. We've opened our Etsy store, jellykoe, recently. We're selling all sorts of fun plushies that we call WonkyDolls. We wanted to do some offbeat and different plushies without making them dark or ugly. Joe also creates dolls from wine corks called Wine-Os, and we're in the process of doing some art dolls as well. I'm very much excited about designing and making clothes for them, since I like to do costumes so much. 
Joe designs most of the dolls, I do most of the sewing, and we split the rest of the work. We have a lot of fun doing it, and while I still love my other crafts, I'm pretty much sticking this one out. I have such a bad habit of picking up and dropping hobbies. With the both of us working at it, we hope it will do well. 
No sales yet, but a lot of hearts and views, so we're being optimistic. Next week we have our first craft show in Myrtle Beach, and we're very excited about that.
