Another A-Pop has come and gone, and I have mixed feelings about the convention this year. It was my 4th time attending, and while on paper it looked just as exciting as it has the previous years, after actually attending I think that the shine has effectively rubbed off the event for me. 

On Friday I wore a Kate Bishop Hawkeye outfit (a bit of a mix of my other costumes since it was too cold and rainy for the summery one I had planned) and after arriving at the Ontario Science Centre around 6, we spent the next few hours in line to get wristbands, greeting friends, and having dinner. By the time I actually got inside it was after 9pm, and what ended up happening was mostly Mr Stark, Yavarice, and I checking out the open exhibits and getting a feel for the con until I wanted to go home and crash hard at midnight. most of my photos are from Friday since I wasn't "working" and had full use of both my hands LOL

Saturday was the "debut" of my Extremis Pepper Potts, with an almost-complete arm from KW Stark Resilient.... a certain boyfriend didn't double-check that the finger joints were packed LOL. The arm will be ready for next time, and I should have a better wig too since the one I wore was the "close enough" one from my stockpile. I spent the afternoon volunteering at the Cosplay for a Cure booth raising money for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. When I wasn't doing that, I was chilling with Mr Stark in his full armour, Dan The Video Ninja in a rare cosplaying appearance as Bruce Banner, and Ragz Cosplay as Spidey. I even ran into one of my friends from university (yes, I have a science degree) who works at the Science Centre and we had fun torturing Dan and Kat. In the evening, we managed to catch the circus show, and some of Elijah Wood's DJ set, but missed out on seeing Prozzäk perform when the fire marshal shut down entry to the area just after we left. We waited in line to try to get downstairs for a little while before being told what was going on by OSC staff and then we just gave up, headed home to take off the armour and makeup, and just listen to Prozzäk on CD. Still took me right back to being a teenager. 

On Sunday I had been thinking about wearing Izabel, but I just couldn't get up early enough and I also didn't have all the costume pieces prepped and ready to wear. I decided to just go with my Iron Man dress instead, and in a twist, Mr Stark and I put "Deadpool" in one of my other costumes - Erika from Welcome to Night Vale. That was fun and he confused a lot of people at the con LOL! I spent the whole of the day on Sunday at the booth which was relatively chill compared to Saturday. More friends stopped by and I tried to talk them into shooting with us ~_^ My pals and I stuck around for the booth tear-down and we all had a lovely post-con dinner.

Still... A-Pop just didn't "do it" for me this year. Or last year either, really (though I kept the con report very positive). I could list off all the little negative things, but I think it really comes down to the size of the convention and the venue; all the programming is really spread out throughout the (huge) building, and the con has gotten too big for me to enjoy the events and activities that I loved the first couple of years that I went - either because of crowding or because they're not offered anymore. Although it was great seeing so many of my friends there and I enjoyed spending time with the Cosplay for a Cure booth, I don't think I'm going to be back again next year.

Additional photo credits: Joe's Garage Photos, Elemental Photography, Dan The Video Ninja, Skyleaf Creations.

Big new photo post! A little while ago I got photos back from Elemental from our shoot at Atomic Lollipop so that whole (brand new!) gallery has been posted. I would go into details about the making of it, but it would just be a copy-paste of the blurb on the costume page, so I'm just going to direct you there for the wordy-wordy bits. A couple of my favourite photos are here (and favourites from this set are SO HARD TO CHOOSE!!!), along with a selection of my progress photos for your perusal. 

And there's even more... I've been about 2 years behind on random miscellaneous project updates, so I finally got around to doing that. crafts, gifts, bits and pieces of costumes made for other people, and some non-cosplay clothing have all been added to my "crafts and accessories" page. 

A-Pop is one of my favourite cons simply because what they do is different from all the other local events (even though I don't remotely have the energy to keep up with a convention-festival-rave-thing these days). What really sold me on going this year though (after supposedly going on break from attending conventions) was the venue - how could I possibly say no to a convention held in the Ontario Science Centre?!? For science-related shenanigans, I wanted to wear my Chell cosplay and finally finish my Sam Sparks (from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs), but sadly I didn't get Sam finished on time. So I wore Pepper Potts to cosplay with KW Iron Man, and Erika from Welcome to Night Vale to do a shoot with Elemental :)  Once again, I tried to give this convention the #selfiecon treatment: click for the album!

Mr Stark was staying at the Mystery Shack (my apartment) for the con, and we tried to be relaxed about the weekend, which on one hand meant that we had time for sleeping in and getting sushi for lunch... but on the other, we arrived to the con really late each day and missed out on a lot of programming I was kinda looking forward to. So here's what we did end up doing... (warning that photos from the burlesque shows are probably NSFW)


I had a lot of fun dressing as Fluttershy at Atomic Lollipop this year (including finally putting her cutie mark on a tank top so I wouldn't die in the August heat) and here come the photos! I did little studio-style shoots with Rebel Shotz Photography and DROO through Cosplay for a Cure, and I also have some cute photos from my own camera (thanks to Yavarice) and Paul Hillier. All the photos and links have been added to my Fluttershy gallery!
Also, here's the video that I took while I was there:

Unfortunately doing cons back-to-back means that somethings get neglected, like how I forgot to post about going to ConBravo! which was last weekend. But I'm here just in time for Atomic Lollipop tomorrow! Here's what the lineup looks like:

A report for Bravo will come soon after I get this next weekend of ridiculous fun out of the way ;) Hope to see some of you there!