Yup, We Went to a Bigfoot Festival in 2019!

January 3, 2020 ~ Cynthia Abernathy ~ Leave a comment

Here’s some of the fun I didn’t get to share with everyone in the busy time of the year – we went to a Bigfoot Festival! Actually, we sort of went to two. Let me explain… 🙂

As often happens in a year, we found we had a gap with fewer shows than we thought, so we went on a last minute online rush to find some shows we could do and keep things going. We ended up finding a small event in Cherokee, NC. It was the first Cherokee Legends Comic Con. As we’re still having fun exploring our state, we decided why the hell not?

So first the fun that is Cherokee… We had never been out there before, and I have to say it was kind of cool to do an event on the Cherokee reservation. We had no idea how we would do business-wise, so we made sure we would have fun anyway. I found us possibly the oddest and most fun hotel we have stayed at. We were in what looked like a 1970s built tourist “teepee” fronted cabin. It looked run down terrifying from the drive up (seriously, I forewarned my husband so he wouldn’t think I was totally crazy), but absolutely delightful once you were there. We had a full cabin with a nice kitchen and multiple bedrooms, and then the back opened up into an awesome porch with hot tub, over one of the creeks that feeds the river in town. So nice!

And that river was one of the things I loved about Cherokee. When we weren’t working, we were taking walks in beautiful parks on the water, and stopping in silly touristy shops. (Yes, we did also go to the casino before we left.) Since I grew up in a family that collected native art, I also took time to find some real galleries.

The event was entertaining, and not bad for a very small first year event. Unfortunately several vendors did not show up… but fortunately we’d also brought pretty much all of our stock with us, so we ended up taking over an entire row to help fill the room. We were back to back with two of the celebrity guests, so we had an awesome time chatting and laughing during the many slow times. Not exactly a money maker for us, but fun.

The event was organized by someone who had primarily had organized Bigfoot and related conventions in the past, and it showed. There was a lot more Bigfoot or alien sightings or supernatural experiences to the panels than comics, but it was still a lot of fun, and an introduction to an event type that we had not done before. And as a result of being there, we were invited to the South Carolina Bigfoot Festival.

This was another moment of “Sure, why not?” So in October, we were off to a Bigfoot themed street festival in South Carolina.

We don’t do a lot of street festivals anymore. We used to do more, but as our work is not exactly main stream it doesn’t tend to do really well for us. Well, not so great at sales for this one because of that bane of outdoor festivals in October – rain. But oh my was it a blast!

Costumed people as Bigfoot wandering around and posing for pictures, contests for Bigfoot look-alikes and having the biggest feet, this town knows how to throw a great event!

If we do these again, we hope for better weather, and will bring more Bigfoot and cryptid related items with us.

(I did make these silly journal covers for the South Carolina Bigfoot Festival. I’m going to make more – see them on Etsy here!)

Halloween 2018 – Our First Haunted House!

December 31, 2018 ~ Cynthia Abernathy

If you didn’t already know, I am a massive Halloween nut. It is my favorite holiday, and I have bins and bins of decorations. Now that we are making the move into prop rental, a lot of my decorations and props are now property of the shop.

So, as we wanted to show off what we do and make, the old/new theater space, and show there’s some life on The Boulevard, we threw our first public haunted house this year!

I unfortunately didn’t get pictures when the lights and everything were set, but here – enjoy Jac’s welcome we made as a promo!

And here’s some stills we took during shut down – plus our awesome cast and crew on Halloween night!

Catching Up – What a Year It’s Been!

November 21, 2017November 21, 2017 ~ Cynthia Abernathy

Hello everyone! It’s been quite the crazy year and we’re way behind on sharing what we’ve been up to. And there is awesome news to come!

So, let’s start with catching up on a year worth of incredible shows and a huge thank you for everyone who came out to see us.

20170616_130234 — First to kick off the summer was Awesome Con! Cynthia squeezed a lot into one little table. Next year, we have a full booth to share our geeky armor designs!

20170617_125300 — It was the weekend of Wonder Woman! This amazon came back to show off the bracers she bought from us.

20170630_135056 — Blerdcon was a first year convention in DC, dedicated to underrepresented groups in pop culture. It was one of the most welcoming events I have ever been to, and we are happily looking forward to next year.

20170630_135125 — A closeup of our extreme colorfulness for Blerdcon.

20170721_171314 — Scares That Care! This was our third year at this event, one of our favorites every year.

20170721_171340 — Our awesome artist friend Kat joined us in our room this year, and made these awesome signs to help people find us.

20170722_171146 — …and then she became part of the room decor…

20170722_175942_001 — …until we had a little building emergency adventure.

20170723_121423 — But all was well and we kept on having fun for charity!

20170811_141852 — Next was our first time at FanExpo Boston. A decent weekend, though we definitely learned from it if we choose to do it again.

20170811_142643 — Our endcap booth at Boston. The artist section of this one really is print and comic artists, so we’d be better off in the dealer area.

20170831_211250 — Dragon Con! Another crowded tiny table. I am hoping for more space for next year.

20170831_211307 — These bottles continued to be a huge hit – almost all of them sold day one!

20170916_101338 — Entering fall with Frederick Pagan Pride. A beautiful, brightly sunny day.

20170916_101411 — Nathaniel put out a great display of new bone knives for the fall.

That’s it for the shows that I remembered to take pictures of this past year! Check out our show schedule to see where to find us next.

Artomatic 2017

July 6, 2017July 6, 2017 ~ Cynthia Abernathy

Here’s a little change from our usual shows. Artomatic is one of my favorite recurring art events in the DC area. Every couple of years, they take over a vacant office building. The space is first come first serve to artists for whatever they want to create and share. It is a great opportunity to meet other artists and jump start your creativity.

This year Artomatic came back to Crystal City, and we managed to get a three person room. We split it between the two of us and another gamer artist friend, Kat, who does lovely comic style art. Doing a room together made us seem like a small, curated gallery. People loved stopping by and seeing our work over the month the show was running. So here’s what we displayed in our awesome room.

IMG_20170319_184658 — My big project for the winter was to make a leather dragon. I made her head first, which means scaled up she was 13 feet long. Final assembly had to happen in place… so here she is while I am still adding scales.

IMG_20170319_213702 — Up close on the dragon’s face. So many pieces of leather!

IMG_20170319_213717 — And done! Ahdraga drew many people to our lovely gallery room.

IMG_20170319_213729 — My additional leather work, these shadow boxes were all inspired by vintage lace patterns.

IMG_20170319_213744 — Kat’s wall! Wonderful and fun ink and watercolor pieces.

IMG_20170319_213746 — Another view for Kat.

IMG_20170319_213752 — Nathaniel made weapons of modern gods. These got a lot of chuckles as people read the snarky captions.

IMG_20170319_213758 — Hard to tell from the photo, but this sword is huge!

Event Review: Misfit’s Witch’s Bazaar and Ball

December 16, 2016December 16, 2016 ~ Cynthia Abernathy

Sometimes, we’ll take a chance on a new event. That was the case with this one – we received an invite through our Etsy store, and it sounded like fun. It was a two part event. In the daytime, a family friendly witch’s bazaar. At night, an adults only party.

While the event was fun, it was not really successful for us as vendors. Traffic was low, and the two events with the break between them didn’t really seem to work for crowd energy. I think this event would do better if it decided what it really wanted to be and focused on it.

The site was a fun park, which in the daytime was great to wander and see all the vendors. At night, not all of the vendors stayed… and unfortunately those that did weren’t all clumped together. Which also meant as the October evening temperatures dropped, people stopped wandering.

The costumes were cool and the people were fun, but this was one of very few events that we have left early.

img_20161022_111249 — I was feeling witchy for the Witch’s Bazaar! So I made myself a new leather waist cincher for the occasion.

20161022_123205 — Our tent (a cheap Walmart buy after our recent tent disasters) in the cute park courtyard.

20161022_123213 — Anticipating a cold evening – cloaks!

20161022_123250 — Our across the courtyard neighbors.

20161022_123342 — Displaying our wares to be seen from as many directions as possible.

20161022_213945 — Showing off the glowy items at night!

Don’t forget – we really need your help to buy a new tent! Your help with our fundraising efforts is massively appreciated.

Event Review: 2016 Pagan Pride Days

December 2, 2016December 2, 2016 ~ Cynthia Abernathy

One of the highlights of our September is always Pagan Pride Days. These are lovely one day events all over the country where various people of pagan leanings come together. This year we made our way to three of the events: Frederick MD, Northern Virginia, and Belmont NC.

This was our second year at Frederick Pagan Pride, and I am happy to say much less rainy than last year! Actually, it was a beautiful day. The event took place on the front lawn of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Frederick. It was a wonderful setting, welcoming and friendly. And speaking of, we happily got to meet up with various vendor and fair friends as well.

20160917_100730 — Our booth on the hill! Nice collection of ritual tools and cloaks.

20160917_100759 — A bit of the view from inside the tent.

20160917_135648 — Happy customer with our horn-tipped spear, black fleece cloak, and short crystal wand.

20160917_153420 — The beautiful front lawn and its gorgeous willow tree.

20160917_181833 — It feels like you’re in the middle of nowhere here, and it is so peaceful.

20160917_182619 — I’ve had a thing for willow trees since elementary school. Here’s the view from under the tree back towards the church. And a bit of the sunset as we’re all packing up.

20160917_182633 — Kids unfortunately tore down a number of the willow branches, but we got permission to collect what was on the ground to make something out of. So here’s Nathaniel goofing off while collecting them for next year!

The following Saturday was Northern Virginia and Belmont NC Pagan Pride Days. I went to NoVa, Nathaniel to NC. So I only have photos from NoVA. It was a little weird being back on my college campus – that had been a while! The setting gave this festival a definitely different feel. And I started off the day with our canopy, which had already been stressed by the winds at Steampunk World’s Fair, breaking as I went to set it up. Thank goodness for PVC pipes and duct tape!