I kicked off con season in April with Boston Comic Con, which was an absolute blast. This was my second year attending and the show just keeps getting better. Everyone running the show was super kind and helpful and met some really great people over the weekend. A fantastic time, hope to be part of the show again next year!
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| Friday before Asbury Park Comic Con, relaxing and exploring the town. |
A little over a week ago was Asbury Park Comic Con. This was a new show (first year) held at Asbury lanes, which is an old bowling alley with lots of retro charm. I was really excited to check out the town so we packed up the car and headed there a day early and I'm so glad we did! We wound up spending all of Friday exploring. The town is packed with cool old buildings, a rad boardwalk and beach, antique stores on Cookman Ave and of course...the Silver Ball Museum! Oh my gosh this place...it's one of those must check out spots if you've never been before. The museum is jam packed with vintage pinball machines and a few arcade machines I've never seen or heard of before. Did I mention you can play everything in there?! Yep, we wound up spending a ton of time there, taking pictures and playing the machines.
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| A few shots from the Silver Ball Museum, Asbury Park, NJ |
The next day was the con, which was a great time. It was small scale show and music was played all day (Loved it!), a nice refreshing change of pace from your regular comic show. Can't wait to go back next year, I have a feeling Asbury Park Con will become one of my favorites to attend.
Something I've been playing around with recently has been making jewelry and merch with my artwork. I figured with the recent shows going on, I'd try making few pieces and see how it would go. A few pieces came long with me to Asbury and sold! Right now just some smaller pieces have been finished, hair pins and pendant necklaces. I'll be bringing a small batch with me to Heroes Con in June. It's been fun creating these little designs and color schemes...and planning for fall jewelry as well (Halloween!!).
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| Cats, birds, witches and shoes! A few of the art pendants. |
I also decided to have some tote bags and little blank books printed up with artwork. Tote bags are something I've been wanting to try out for awhile, so I went ahead and created some fun retro circus imagery to print on them...only problem is trying to decide on colors!
The blank books will be a natural brown printed with dark purple ink and feature three cool cats on the cover and three cool chicks on the back (let's see how many people get the reference!). Hoping to make tons of merch in the future, it's a great way to get creative and sell a slice of art at a lower price point, something everyone can pick up. Hoping to play around with stickers soon, too!
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| Little blank notebook designs, will be printed on front & back |
Once July hits, I'll list a few pieces of jewelry and some of these items in my Etsy shop. I'm going to keep it pretty limited with a different listing each month. I'll be concentrating on painting the whole month of July and August, planning some new prints for the fall and winter. Very excited about making some Halloween art and prints for this fall/winter!
Below are a few pre-show commission paintings currently made. A huge thanks to everyone who pre-ordered paintings the past few shows and supported my work. I'm so grateful and absolutely blown away at the number of paintings that have been ordered recently, my list for Heroes is completely filled up! (Quick note on commissions: I'll be accepting a very limited number of commissions for delivery in the late summer through the fall.)
