What a weekend! I am utterly exhausted, and can't afford to be - must plough on with school work!

I think I'll just keep my review brief as I do need to get back to work, but would like to summarise the weekend before all my memories evaporate. (Goldfish!)

Saturday Highlights
~ Thinking OH HEY THIS IS IT and wondering around the convention: the event set-up was amazing - I must admit I got lost a few times. I was very pleased to see a wider range of stalls this time round. I don't actually have any swag to show (do not mug a cosplayer - we have spent all of our dosh on costumes) apart from a few freebies from ~Selphiroth.

~ Placing 3rd in the AMV contest with my video "Better Than This" - [link] and realising OH SNAP I WROTE THE LYRICS WRONG. [desks] Note for the future: do not try and complete a music video in 5 days on very little sleep and a mountain of school work.

~ Catching up with everyone! It was great chatting to you all, placing faces to usernames and seeing a few new folks.

~ Being greeted with "oh hey, you're the person that made the wig tutorial!" It's nice to know that the tutorial was actually helpful and people appreciate it. :3 [link] It's just my own personal way of putting on wigs and I'm sure there are better methods, but this is my spin on it. (Please excuse the "lolhaveamerrychristmasgaiz" banter - I did not expect for the video to be so popular (it's over 9000!) and thought it would just be a one-off thing. Ah well, nothing wrong with spreading a little Christmas cheer, even if it is ridiculously early!)

~ The Animation Panel was great in the morning - perhaps the best I've ever seen it. All the guests are absolutely lovely. I've found that even if you don't know who the guests are at the beginning of Geddon, you will love them all at the end.

Sunday Highlights
~ The Ouran Host Club photoshoot with Sylvie in the morning was pretty darn awesome - can't wait to see the resulting photos. :3 Yay, we had the entire Host Club and you all looked amazing!

~ The Cosplay Games. Wow, I'm not quite sure what to say. I'm blown away by how successful the event was - cosplayers were cueing up outside the doors half an hour before the event was scheduled to start ([link]) and the room was completely packed to the rafters ([link]). We're going to need a bigger boat... We ran out of time to get through everything (which was ironic as I thought we'd hardly fill 40 minutes) and Seth Green paid us a visit. (I'm glad I was told this afterwards, as otherwise I would have completely froze up on stage! ) Thank you so much to all of our quiz participants that represented each NZ City, our extreme costume making models, all of our Host Club members - especially Anne as cloaked candy thrower and door guarder - and our lovely audience. Without you all we couldn't have put on such a great event that's been described as a highlight of people's Geddon weekend on the CNZ forums. I apologise for the ending chaos - I honestly didn't think we'd run overtime and have learnt my lesson.

Monday Highlights
~ Walking past the Wig Effects stall in my Rydia birdsnest. Fufufufu.. I did get a few questions on how I'd made it - basically I started off with a long thick base wig and sewed 2 packs of extensions into that. The wig was then curled, backcombed and sprayed to heck and back. Most of the hair was then swooshed to one side, and a bra-cup was sewn in with hair attached to that to create some ~poof!~ as well as some green tulle. Hand-painted and hand-dyed feathers were then glued in, along with leaves, hand-beaded wire stars and more bead strands. More wefts, more feathers, more beads were then added - the final step was adding in the headdress which is made from MORE beads, feathers, flowers and leaves. A lot of the detail gets lost in photos, I'm hoping to do some detail shots of my costume later on once all school work is done.

~ Dressing up with my Clan Biscuit homies (~JVCA and ~SowiloWitch) as Rosa, Rydia and Edge from FF4. A great game, that I hope we did justice to through our costumes and skit ([link]) and it was completely unexpected to receive best group and best skit! Trust me, tears ensued. Everyone's costumes in the competition were absolutely STUNNING - it's great to see people putting their best into cosplay and really levelling up: we've come a long way guys and you're all absolutely awesome.

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I now completely have the con plague after skirting round illness beforehand and am utterly exhausted after getting up at 4am each day to finish off beading but wouldn't change anything. Still soldiering on - have written 20 pages on a media studies internal so far between today and yesterday so that's one bit of school work off my list. FIGHTO!

...but in the meantime a small break to watch the other half of the Two Towers to get some costuming and film inspiration.

Thank you all for an epic weekend.