So my plan for yesterday was to sleep and sleep and sleep and not leave my house because I was exhausted. Instead, I slept really late, ordered Chinese food, figured out my budget to restock my entire inventory, and started organizing the merch I had left for Staple. Lubbock-Con wiped me out, which is a good thing. Because it was pretty damn amazing.
Lubbock-Con was this past Saturday on the 20th at the Civic Center and happened to run not only during the pancake festival (which draws in an enormous crowd all day) but also the Little Mermaid musical. So think a crap ton of families wanting food and another crap ton of families with little kids dressed as mermaids and then an unholy amount of nerds and cosplayers all mixed together.
I was busy all day.
Set up was Friday night after I got off work and after that, my plan was to pull an all nighter to make sure I was prepared for Saturday. Mine and Rony's friend, Erica (Koolaid Girl Art), shared my table with me since it was her first con and first time selling. She's done our Ladies Nights at Star Comics before but hadn't ever made prints and sold those. She had far less stuff to get together than me since she doesn't try to make 10000 different things like I do (because I'm an overachiever) so she mostly helped me set up.
I didn't go to bed until 4am and that's because I was too delirious to see what I was doing and almost cried when I realized I needed to cut out Jolteon charms and oh god why did I make the design so spiky??? Woke up at 7am, panicked because I didn't finish, got dressed, and booked it to the Civic Center at 8am for pre-show finishing touches.
The line for the pancake festival which started at 7am was already long as hell and there was a line forming for the con. I scratched my display since a last minute trip to Michael's ended up with me buying new jewelry displays and quickly redid everything!
And from the time doors opened at 9am, I didn't have time to even breath. Instantly, we were busy. We got wiped out of dollar bills early, panicked, got some dollars back, and then almost cried when Rony showed up with a few more because why do people always pay for small stuff in 20's???
The entire day I only got to get up and walk and go to the bathroom once and it was during the Miss Lubbock-Con pageant when everyone was too busy watching to come by. Said hi to people, bought some Sailor Moon merch and a cupcake, ran back so I could prepare for Round Two.
I didn't even have the chance to take pictures of all the cool cosplayers. It was pretty awesome. Erica was busy all day doing sketch commissions and selling prints and every time I would finish one Eevee Necklace, another would sell out and I'd have to make more.
Everyone was super nice and excited and even though I was dead tired, it was a ton of fun. Everyone seemed to having a blast at the con and it was crazy how well organized everything was considering this was a con debut. (And we got free lunch which I was super grateful for because I was going to starve if I couldn't leave the table)
Overall, this has been the best con I've been to and a great start to the year. I'm sold out of almost everything which is mind blowing. I'm very excited to have been a part of it and can't wait until next year. Everyone was happy, business was good, and I had a lot of fun. Thank you to DeNae and the whole team that put this on and have been so welcoming and supportive of this little business of mine! You guys are great!
Now onto the big one, Staple.
After I sleep a bit more though.
-Sam <3