This year for Cyphan I worked as miscellaneous security and crew member to help set up for events and check badges. It was a lot of fun and I got to meet a lot of new people.

Cyphan invited Ernie Hudson, one of the Ghostbusters, as the celebrity guest. As a result, the entire convention had a Ghostbusters theme to it. About 50 cosplayers showed up in Ghostbusters uniforms, the Ecto 1 car was brought in, and the imperial ball included Ghostbuster themed games and prizes. It really was a blast, and Ernie Hudson was a very good speaker. He seemed to genuinely enjoy being there and he was a very good speaker and had a lot of good things to say during his Q and A panel. I got to shake his hand!

During my time there I also talked with several artists and writers about their work and got some tipes for myself from them. I even found a lead as far as a publishing company that might be interested in my style of writing! I also was encouraged to make some art and craft peices and start an etsy store, something I've been mulling in my head for a while and now that I have a bit more encouragement, might try out in the near future.

On Friday night, I got to watch Red Hot Annie's burlesque troop Vaudzilla perform for Cyphan. They were amazing as always. However, right in the middle of one of the main acts, right before the big reveal of twirling pasties, the lights went out. We blew a fuse! The hotel was embarrassed and gave out free drink tickets to the audience members. I am friends with a few of the performers so afterwards we chatted a bit and everyone at the party sang karaoke. Saturday night was the imperial ball and we spent half the night dancing away and celebrating my friend Jess's birthday.

During the course of the weekend I cosplayed Caprica Six from BSG, Inara from Firefly, and Astrid from Doctor Who. I didn't have any Ghostbuster themed costumes but perhaps another time...

Today I wrote a flash fiction piece called "Pineapple Genocide". It didn't take me long but it was fun to write. There's a lot written in so little words. I guess that's why I like experimenting with Flash Fiction. You may read the piece on my fiction shelf in the library.

On Tuesday I met with Ketih and Jess to do a Poison Ivy/Harley Quinn photoshoot in Sugar Grove. Even though Poison Ivy is one of the sexiest costumes I have created, I never got a good professional photoshoot as her and Keith really wanted to do something with the character so we collaborated. Jess also wanted to do some work with Keith as well and being she did Harley Quinn, it only made sense to invite her to the shoot. We had a blast.

Jess was a little weary and cranky from a long day of work prior to the shoot and the 100% weather, but once she got into costume and started posing she lightened up and Keith got some fantastic pictures of her!

Keith usually prefers to work indoors where he controls the backdrop and lighting completely, but I convinced him to so a few shots outside amongst some really creepy foliage and he really enjoyed it and the shots outside might have been the best from the day. I hope he tries to do more outdoors and in less controlled enviornments because I'm hoping to connect him with some work where flexibility with environments is a must, and I think he'll find he's extremely good at it.

It will take him a week or two to start working on the photos. If he decides to make a gumprint it will take even longer than that, but I'm extremely excited to see how they turned out. I'll post them here as I receive them!

On Saturday, members of the Stafford Society promoted TeslaCon at the Bristol Renaissance Faire during the Steampunk Invasion this past weekend.

Wearing late 1800s/early1900s Victorian outdoor outfit, I walked around talking to other Steampunk enthusiasts about steampunk and TeslaCon. People took pictures of me and complimented me left and right. Some of the comments were so flattering that I stayed in a constant state of blushing.... or was that from the beating heat of the sun? My favorite thing about the weekend was explaining curious people who had no knowledge of Steampunk what it was and why we were all there.

The Stafford Society also escorted Eric Larson/Lord Bobbins (creator and head of TeslaCon) throughout the Faire to show him different acts and talent he could recruit for the convention in December. Afterwards, I asked him if his experience that day had been one of work or play, and he admitted that it was a little bit of both.

As a result of our efforts we sold 20 more badges and estimate to sell out by the end of August. Selling out three whole months before the convention? Pretty impressive. I'm very excited for the actual event!

I had a few costume problems from the day though... well I guess just one. I left the Faire to drop something off at the car and they stamp you so you can get back in, well that blue stamp on my wrist rubbed off on my white dress and got blue right on the front! That's why I'm wearing that navy blue wrap around the middle to hide it. No one knew unless I told them that the wrap wasn't supposed to be there, but it was a bit frustrating. the ink was water-based so I believe it will come out of the skirt.

My only real regret from the weekend is that I did not get any good photos of my clothing from the day. The one above does not do it justice in the slightest. I'm going to schedule a shoot with Keith to better capture my work. Below is a group photo of all the steampunk characters at the Faire. I'm on the bottom left with my skirt all fanned out on the ground.

I wrote a blog post on the paleolithic diet at last. I've been meaning to do so and it felt great to finally plug away at it. I enjoyed it so much that I think I'm going to write a full fledged essay on it using elements from the post. I think I should try to write more on beauty and health in the near future.

If you have any interest in reading the blog post, click here.

I met up with Keith Gerling for coffee and we discussed plans for a photoshoot with my Poison Ivy costume and also another photoshoot where I'll be his assistant as he photographs professional model Claudine. He also gave me some of his artwork!

Keith is extremely talented. Using old techniques of gumprinting and tintyping, he creates unique pieces of art that almost look like paintings rather than photographs. It's a time consuming craft that is almost extinct now; the gumprint he made of me on the left took him a whole month to complete. He has done a few other gumprints and tintypes of me in other collaborations.

The Windy City Burlesque Festival starts up in Chicago this weekend so I went to the start of it at Lincoln Tap for some pre-fest burlesque with Vaudzilla and other performers. Both the 9:00 and 11:00 sets were phenomenal and I saw everything from Kaylee-Firefly performance to a sword dancer.

It was great catching up with the burlesque scene. I talked with a few photographer friends of mine, performers, and regular Vaudzilla fans. It was cool to learn that one of my favorite performers, Jeez Loueez, recently won first place at a Viva Las Vegas competition and she donned a crown on her head all night.

One of my favorite performances of the night was by a woman not of the Vaudzilla company; an Asian who did sword balancing and hypnotizing dancing while wearing a snake leotard with a beautifully painted face. She looked like something out of cirque de soleil. I'll need to ask Kriss what her stage name is. I was completely mesmerize

Yesterday, Sebastian White and I went to the comic book store figure out the set and shots for this upcoming weekend's shoot there. The store workers were extremely down to Earth and helpful. They not only were completely cool with us shooting there, but even said that they were willing to move around some of the displays for the different angles as we so needed.

We also readied the basement shots and tried to work out camera and lighting problems. I'm excited to start working more on the project. I like the people I'm collaborating w

Last month, my friend Lindsay called me up and wanted to use me as a model at her beauty school for a "Through the Ages" competition. She wanted to create a 1920's flapper girl look on me which took a lot of effort being that I had the completely wrong type of hair for such a thing.

It was fun being a doll for a day! Other than putting together most of the flapper costume, I just had to sit there and let Lindsay do all the work.

Using glues and heavy foundation, she covered up my natural eyebrows and painted new ones on me to give those iconic thin high arches. She gave me fake eyelashes to give me that dolls look and painted cupid's bow lips on me. Between the eyebrows and the lips I was totally transformed and I didn't even look like myself. Next, she transformed my waist-long straight hair into a short wavy bob, not by cutting but by tucking, hiding, crimping, etc.

I walked the cat walk with the the other models in front of the judges, Lindsay won third place in the competition and a lot of recognition amongst her peers and teachers. Afterwards, we went over to a local park and had a fun photo shoot to show off our work. I tried to get Keith Gerling to take some photos of lindsay's creation, but he had another photo shoot that day.

Below you can browse through some of the photos from the shoot!