Hi lovelies, 

Today I want to share my experience at Fantasy-Con (organized by Fantasy-Schmiede.at). It’s a convention I’ve been meaning to attend for ages, but it never worked out...until now. hehe.

The convention was held at old WU and I have been there before for my tambour embroidery class and let me tell you, it's a maze. A freaking maze. You have to take the right lift at the correct number and if not, you are just hopelessly lost. This maze was the business university for decades, I wonder how all the students would get to their classes in time?

We arrived a tad bit late as I overslept once again and then took an hour to get ready. At least the location was reachable with only one metro and we were there in a jiffy. 

The entrance hall has a few painting or murals on the wall and we took pictures in front of one. Somehow it reminds me of a beach but if I remember correctly, the picture had nothing to do with a beach. We took quick pictures and then we were ready to face the convention. 

I'm wearing a btssb dress I bought at the B&B after the Vienna Teaparty in 2024. Shoes are from Deichmann and the hat, stocking and blouse are from Aliexpress. 

Tickets were 19€ which was okay but bordering to expensive because as we entered we saw that it was almost...empty. But they had 4 different gaming rooms and I'm pretty sure most of the people were in these rooms to play and try out different games. 

We went to the artist alley and chatted with familiar faces. There was a mix of artists who sold illustration prints, handmade jewelry, woodworking, hats, dice, and more. I was interested in a pair of Sailor Moon earrings but before I bought it, I checked aliexpress because the items were too diverse to be handmade and yup, I found the exact pair of earrings for 5€ instead of 16€. 

I have no problem spending more money if an item is handmade or at least put together by the artist. But reselling mass-produced items at triple the price without transparency? Nah, no thanks.

 

Afterwards we went over to the books and the TTRPGs. There was a Cthulhu pandemic game that we could join so we put our names down but had to wait for half an hour for our session to start. 

While waiting, we stumbled upon Popcircle Austria, another club and faces we knew! They had a cute little single-player card game. My partner and I both gave it a try. He beat it, but I wasn’t so lucky. My first card was an automatic fail, followed by two bad rolls. Total wipeout and fail. 

As for the Cthulhu game, it was fun even though we lost big time. But it's a very strategic game with so many options and we were just unlucky beginners! I'm not mad at all or sad that we lost because we had a lot of fun. 

Hias and I got snacks and a tea as the prices were okay and I watched part of a panel hosted by the Nerd Sisters, who were discussing streaming and gaming.

Eventually, we left and went to a bbq but that's another story.

I actually wanted to show you a short I made but it seems like I forgot to upload it? I'm a bit confused and can't remember if I really did one. Oh well, sorry about that.  

So, off to my rating:

Atmosphere: 1/10 Sorry, the location is just SO bad and there was no effort to decorate anything more fantasy)

Activities: 8/10  I liked the timeslots for games so you could get one and do something else until then. There were also many more games to try out. 

Food: 8/10 They had drinks, cakes, tea, coffee, savory food but only two food booths and no vegan food.

 

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All the best, 

Auris Lothol

 

Hello lovelies, 

I haven't been to connichi in years. I blogged about visiting Connichi in 2015 but actually the last one I attended was in 2018 and I also attended in 2016. But nevertheless, 6 years is a very long time. 

On Thursday we drove up to Wiesbaden by car and it was a 7 hours ride. It didn't feel that long though as we talked about our travel plans for the next few years. We also only made one stop at Mcdonald's for food.

Happy with my mcdonalds nuggets.
And of course, we had ice-cream too even though I couldn't finish it all. Our friends were hours behind us and we met them in the airbnb later on. When we arrived in Wiesbaden we had an hour left to set up the booth but it only took us about 30mins. 

The view from the Wiesbaden hall onto the street. Wiesbaden is a quaint and beautiful city, I enjoyed that I saw there.

The next day we left earlier and went to idee and Listmann and bought embroidery floss and beads before going to the congress hall. 

The view from my booth. The big white fabric is a booth from a vendor we got quite close to. We bought a cute little crochet shrimp, two hairbows and a hairpin. In turn, she bought a Sailor Moon broch from me.

My expensive karage with rice. I thought it was good but really not worth the price. It was just so small :(
And yummy takoyaki. Those were fine price-wise, as far as I remember.

I was cold and forgot to take off my cardigan but underneath I am wearing the Kaneko strawberry trellis dress. I love it! I received it in the mail the day before we left and i just tossed it into the suitcase to open up in Wiesbaden.
 

My hairdo was a bit messy but I thought it was super cute. A creepy grandma talked to me on the streets and said she wants to lick my strawberries. And she was over 90 years. So weird, haha.

Sales were slow and I was pretty surprised that the artist alley was not...full? I have seen Animarkets with more people. That gave me a first impression and feeling of what the next few days would bring and my gut feeling was, saddly, correct. Talking to a few other artists this weekend made me realize that they too didn't have a lot of sales and that made the fact that I won't be making any money a bit easier? If that made sense. I then relaxed a bit, cross-stitch embroidered a few new items and chatted with the people instead of concentrating on selling. 

And that's what I basically did Saturday and Sunday.

I found this amazing sticker with the logo of Baby the stars shine bright just...saying something else. All of the Viennese egl community loved it and Hias bought up the whole stock for them. 

 

After Con pizza on Friday. I was famished.

My look for Saturday. I forgot to take more pictures. Oops. I am wearing my Angelic Pretty Milky Swan JSK with my handmade feather accessoires and AP bows.

And this btssb outfit was from Sunday.

My hair and the color was already a bit of a mess :/.
On the last day, I ditched the stall for an hour and let M. handle everything and strolled around. I found so many cute items and bought a small satchel in rainbow colours. After the convention we went back to the hotel and ordered Thai food. It was not the best and took more than an hour and we were all famished by the time it arrived :(.

We drove back on Monday around 10 am and it was a horrible travel. It took us more than 9 hours and there were so many traffic jams and rainy weather.

We drove past Frankfurt airport and the planes were landing too close for comfort. Afterwards, we drove to Edeka, Rossmann and Aldi and drank some tea, got some snacks and a lot of cosmetics. Prices are just so much cheaper in Germany than in Austria.

We finally made it over the border after a long drive and I was so happy that I had to take a picture of the sign. But we were not there yet as there was another long traffic jam after Enns or Krems. I can't remember anymore.
We drove off and got some gas and I got some free mcdonalds snacks as I had accumulated a lot of points in the app to get free food.
And here we finally drove into Vienna. Finally. I could not believe it took us this long.

All the best and have a great weekend, 

Auris Lothol

 

Hello lovelies, 

last weekend I went to Austria Comic Con in Wels in Upper Austria. It was way smaller than Vienna Comic con and not really reachable by public transportation especially on Sunday or had hefty waiting times. They had special guests like James Marsters, Ruth Conell and Bai Ling, Cosplayers and Comic artists.

I paid 120€ for two tickets, two chairs and a table of about 120x60cm. A normal entry ticket was about 20€ for a day, 38€ for two days and 112,5€ for the VIP tickets. Definitely not as pricy as Vienna Comic con.

We had booked an appartment and the previous guests had completly trashed it. We therefore got a new hotel which was a bit more expensive but booking would come up for the price difference. The only problem was, that it was way out of the city and there was no good public transportation. Damn. We cancelled our train reservations and went by car instead. Which turned out, was an even better decision as the busses and trains to the convention halls were not sparse on Sunday.

The hotel we stayed in was a small castle but nothing remained of it. The hotel also houses a small train museum and thus the train picture on the wall.

Here the view out of the window. The clouds were so pretty.

And now back to Comicon!

Here is my booth again - my fancy moons and everything else. We could set up the table the night before. I'm always a bit nervous about leaving my items there but there, only covered by a blanket.

Close up of the anime corner.

Here is my look from Friday. The dress is from Ank rouge and it has a little cupcake and chocolate print.

The next day I wore my trusted btssb dress. It's super comfy and I love wearing it for conventions.

Saturday was the best day but it didn't beat Vienna Comic con so I had a lot of time to embroider and finally finish this cherry. It was on my ufo for so long, I think almost a year. But I really like how it turned out and plan on maybe...keeping it?

Selfie time! The bow is actually mounted on the waist but as it's detachable, I added a hairclip to it and now always use it as a big hairbow lol. Nobody knows.

We were so tired and exhausted, after the convention we grabbed some food at mcdonalds and went back to the hotel room.

Hias gifted me this elegant elvish dice set. He did not know that I was tempted to buy it but decided not to. And it was the only thing I wanted at the convention. He is amazing!

Day 2!

Another super comfy dress in Japan. I just love strawberries. It's almost a bit too big for me but that makes it a perfect all-u-can eat dress too.

And of course, another picture behind the booth.

Sunday was even worse financially as there were so few people. We sat around all day long and I had about 5 sells. Oh well, more time for embroidery. It was good I learned from Vienna Comic con and brought all of my stuff along. That's why I could also finally finish a new and darker version of totoro. I use wood glue to glue the felt on the wood and press it with these tiny pink camps. It always looks like an alien spider lol.

View from Comic con on Sunday around 2pm. As I mentioned before, it was really empty. 

And a booth seen from our side. 

And here is the finished totoro. Isn't he a cute boy?
This time we ate something small at the convention and I bought a vegan and a meat siopao and they were 4€. I was so shocked. I sent my mother the picture of them and she was shocked and almost insulted. lol.

 

Another view where the sellers where. I tried to censor the people's faces but it made them look like in a horror movie. Sorry!

The theme of this convention was Jurassic park and they also had two huge dinosaur costumes and roamed around the hall every 2-3 hours with the Jurassic Park theme playing loudly.

One of the costumes. The other one was in use.

ET picture option! I have never seen the movie and have no association to the movie. I only know that the mars brand earned millions with the movie.

Look how empty it is. Plus, there were so many people carrying those stupid mystery bags.

At least the food corner was almost full. Almost.

I treated Hias to some ice-cream but then gave him my half because I didn't like the flavour. :(

And after the convention we drove two other artists to the train station as their only bus connection would not leave before 7pm and they needed to be at the train station before that. 

Afterwards we headed home, ate dinner at Burger King and then arrived home safely to cuddle our little kitty cats.

My thoughts on Austria Comic con: Compared to Vienna comic con the prices for the booth was cheaper but all in all, including food and gas it made it more expensive. There were way less people than Vienna Comic con and the public transportation to and from the convention hall was terrible. I will therefore not attend Austria comic con again, same for Vienna comic con. It was not worth my time and I know some booths earned even less than I did. 

If you enjoy this blog and want to support it, consider leaving a small donation via PayPal. Every bit helps keep things running and lets me keep creating more content just for you. You can donate by clicking the link below:

Thank you so much! 

All the best, 

Auris Lothol