DragonCon Diary 09 – Pre-con Prep

Diary Entries Thus Far:
Dragon Con Diary 09: Pre-Con Prep
Dragon Con Diary 09: To Charge or Not to Charge?
Dragon Con Diary 09: The Rush Begins
Dragon Con Diary 09: The Calm Before the Storm
Dragon Con Diary 09: Matting Madness!
Dragon Con Diary 09: The Aftermath
Dragon Con Diary 09: Video & Photo Stream


In order to give others an idea of what the life of a convention artist is like, I thought I’d keep an ongoing diary of this year’s preparation and main events for Dragon Con. I attend this convention every year when possible and have done so for the past 5 years or so since it’s the largest one local to me. I may be whipping out the video camera to document the chaos as well once my room is a proper mess of convention madness.

This will be my first year having a table in the Artist Alley and the largest size panel display possible in the gallery. That’s four beautiful 4×4 foot pegboards all for me! Now to figure out how the heck to fill them!

So without further ado, let the convention season begin!

Things I’ve done already:

  • Updated inventory files with new prints
  • Updated website with new shop (still need to make it pretty)
  • Uploaded products to the web (including zazzle & deviantart. Considering Redbubble and others as well). Gotta make sure my online presence is thoroughly fluffed and updated for ensuing convention driven traffic.
  • Purchased a 12 pocket rotating countertop rack for display of small matted prints and a tiered magazine display for showing off the larger matted prints (both from www.displays2go.com)
  • Purchased 500 foil accented business cards from vistaprint.com
  • Things I need to do:

  • Re-learn Microsoft Access so I can keep better books
  • Create convention budget and profit/loss projection
  • Recreate inventory master list in Access
  • Design and print the vinyl banner for the table
  • Start matting all the prints to fit in all my shiny spinny displays (50+ 4×6’s to mat?)
  • Handcraft about 25 more art tile and cameo necklaces
  • Estimate how many and which paintings I can complete for display at Dragon Con so I can get my control sheets turned in to the staff
  • Buy proper frames for already matted pieces to display
  • Order more print inventory from iprintfromhome.com
  • Tone up for the Dawn Lookalike Contest (Egads I’m going to be a model??)
  • With only 64 days left till dragon con, the next couple of months are going to be interesting!

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