Gosh it was a busy weekend – so much that I’m going to divide it over a few blog posts for the next week or so. Lots of food, lots of ogling fantastic costumes, hundreds of photos and not a whole lot of sleep!

First up, the main reason I went to Sydney for SMASH – to sell my crafty items at a table with Sam!

Myself and Sam, looking very tired after a day of selling

I have to admit, I was severely under prepared for this event. Some important bits and pieces I realised I needed at the last minute were ordered too late; I didn’t have time to make any prints or illustration based work; I left some important things (like little envelopes for people to take their purchases away in!) back in Canberra; Sam and I were madly sorting things out at 2am the night before.

With all that, I think that I actually got a pretty good response considering the terrible disorganisation! The anime convention crowd is very different to the handmade market crowd, which is something I should probably have anticipated and been less disappointed when I had to halve most of my prices in order for them to sell. In the end I sold most of my stuff but just barely broke even with travel expenses, which was a little disheartening but definitely a worthwhile experience.

I think one area that I let myself down was presentation, which was hurriedly put together and didn’t end up giving a very professional appearance to my work. It’s definitely something that I’ll be working on in time for my table at Manifest in just over a week.

I wish I’d had time to check out the rest of the convention as there were some excellent international guest artists and interesting sounding panels, but even when I went to walk around I felt too burnt out from the late night before to really do too much. I spent a lot of time sitting at our table eating jellybeans and chatting with our table buddies.

Table buddies George and Patrick

Definitely a lot of food for thought from this convention, and I’m hoping to iron out some of the issues before the next one!