MegaCon Tampa 2016: The Best Cosplay!

It's election day as I type this, so today I voted, did some shopping, then spent the last 5 hours editing cosplay photos. Not gonna lie: I'm pretty happy about this. There's no better way to forget national angst and troubles than taking an up-close look at insanely creative cosplay geeks. So, to everyone I'm about to feature here, thank you.

Now, let's talk about the inaugural MegaCon Tampa that happened two weekends back. (If you're just here for pictures, feel free to skip down, heh.)

The final numbers came in at 30,000 attendees, significantly less than Tampa Comic-Con, which is held in the same convention center and nabbed a cool 50K attendees last August, and less than half of MegaCon Orlando, which I believe topped out around 75K last year.

All that to say this was a perfect sized con for newbies and/or for those who dislike massive crowds. The Tampa Convention Center is one of my favorites, as it's small enough to never get lost, big enough to breathe, and filled with THE best light for photos in the common areas.

 

 Light! Glorious light!

Entry and ticket purchases were smooth, security was there but not intrusive, and queue lines were nicely managed and manageable. The vendor room felt cramped with too-narrow aisles, but that's a minor quibble, because the cosplay game was STRONG, y'all. Overall I'm really liking MegaCon's new owners.

That said, I have one major gripe regarding the handling of the headlining celebrity, David Tennant. Tennant put this con on the map - he's never been to a Florida con before -  so MegaCon wisely put his face on all the advertisements to drum up business. But here's the thing: Tennant was only there on Sunday, (it was a 3 day con) and his one-and-only panel cost an additional fee of $25.

Not cool, MegaCon.

I have a vested interest in my griping: John's sister & her hubby flew down from Maine to see David Tennant at this, their first-ever con. We paid for a photo, so she at least got 3 seconds to stand beside him - and I hear got a bit weepy, natch, 'cuz he really is the sweetest:

...but that was it. Tennant's panel would have cost our group an extra HUNDRED DOLLARS to see, and we'd already paid more than that for the photo!

Again, not cool, MegaCon.

Right, end of griping. There's cosplay to gawk at! 

And besides, how can I gripe when this little boy's wheelchair is the Hogwarts Express?

 

::SQUEE!:: It even had lights on the front!

In fact there was all KINDS of great Potter cosplay there, possibly because Mathew Lewis (aka Neville) was one of the celebs that weekend. 

Here's a first: ever see someone dress as a box of Bertie Bott's?

We Faux-Painted Our Garage Door!

Actually, John's been sprucing up the whole front of the house this past week, but the garage door is the bit I think you'll find most interesting.

Here's the "before":

Ok, so the garage isn't actually in frame here, but you *can* see our row of bushes representing Darwin's "Evolution of Shrub."

 For some reason those left four bushes have been half-dead for years, and no amount of fertilizer or bug sprays had any effect, while the right four went on their merry way getting bigger and bigger and mocking our every attempt at symmetry. ARRRRRRGG.

Less visible is the faded paint, old wasp nests in the window trims, and one severely washed out, faux wood grain garage door. 

How washed out, you ask? Well, here's the only "before" I could find, taken just as John was starting to repaint it with an orange base coat:

I still can't believe it was that bad. I think the camera makes it look a lot worse. Yeah. That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it. [shifty eyes]

Here's the base coat completed, and the brown glaze started:

For the first coat of glaze John did a horizontal strié, meaning he dragged the brush sideways only.

This was a little too high-contrast, though, and had some light patches. So we did a second glaze coat of a soft vertical strié, to even it out.

Once the glaze dried, John taped off and painted black squares on top to simulate windows:

An easy trick, but super convincing from the street.

John also installed some decorative hardware: straps and handles. Now we're all FANCY.

And check out our new orange(!!) door, which I am LOVING with the darker garage. You can also see the ridiculously dinky bushes we planted. (They're native Maui Ixora, in yellow.) Plus we repainted the front walls and trim, to clean those up:

Getting those old bushes out was HARD, btw, and John managed to further blow out his rotator cuff doing so. I need to look into some form of one-armed straight jacket to get this guy to sit still. He's on anti-inflammatory meds and doing his stretches, but every week he goes and builds/lifts/rips out things and roughs it up again - so feel free to berate him in the comments for me.

Oh, did you notice the pretty new window box?

More of John's handy work! As I joked on Instagram, let's see how long it takes us to kill the plants. (I am BAD with plants. Baaaaaad.) I do like my combo of Blue Salvia and Marigolds, but I think I need something drapey up front, right? Something to hang over the edge? Gah, plant stuff is hard.

I dream of someday jack-hammering up our nasty old driveway, but for now, at least the house looks cuter. That said, if you have suggestions for making ugly concrete driveways look better, PLEASE share. Any of you tried concrete stain? Or that pebble coating stuff? Or jack-hammering it all up and starting over? :D