Meet the Vendors Series: An inside look at the fan-run stores for HaloBearerUK Part 3
Meet the Vendors Series Part 3 - Lucy Designs (Lucy and Coco)
This week the OCS Newsletter is highlighting the vendors at the upcoming HaloBearerUK Convention. The goal of this series is to introduce you to each of these #WarriorNun fandom members and the love, work, and dedication that goes into bringing you their amazing creations.
We have had the privilege of getting to know them and see their journey the past few months. Some of the questions and situations they must deal with just to prepare for an event are eye opening. How do you make money when you have to pay to be there? How do you balance attendance numbers and their limited extra funds while making sure you have stock, the right sizes, and other vendors while trying to not lose money. Every single vendor has had to face these questions along with creating their merchandise all while living their full-time life. So, take a few minutes to read about their journey and make sure to check out their tables Feb. 23-25.
OCS: Name/Twitter Handle
Lucy @lucydesigns0 and Coco @Coco_Cat38
OCS: A little About yourselves?
Lucy: I am a 21 year old college student who loves design. After finishing my BA in a few months, I’ll be continuing with an MA in graphic design this upcoming fall. Besides art, I love music, computers and video games. I own an extensive collection of electric guitars.
Coco: I am a full time music student at university in my final year. I love cats, composing music, and I enjoy attempting anything creative. I play violin, viola, piano, ukulele, and I am a classically trained singer (not the same as opera lol). I love LOVE singing harmonies and so may well be assembling a lil group to do some singing with at the event.
OCS: How did you discover Warrior Nun?
Lucy: Saw it on the Netflix homepage after season 1 came out. Initially, I thought the name was kind of silly but decided to give it a chance anyway because the show featured a female protagonist. The rest is history
Coco: I had watched s1 without any connection to fandoms, Netflix suggested it on my where did you go screensaver and I looked at it and thought “YUP that's my kind of show” lol. At that point it was just Ava holding a sword looking backwards and the logo so honestly I think I thought “girl with powers and religious elements? Hello I’m sold” #noregrets.
OCS: What made you want to fight to save the show?
Lucy: My love for the show and the blatant lack of queer media, as well as the way queer media is treated by major corporations. I know it’s not the first and definitely not the last time this has happened / will happen, but it being a show I loved made it all the more personal.
Coco: I waited what felt like ages for s2 and then despite knowing i was waiting to hear the news of s2, I did not find out until a tweet from a non netflix account made me aware that it was out that day. I was shocked at how little promo there was for something I had been waiting so long for, especially considering the promo for other shows that I was also waiting for around the same time! I started searching the #WarriorNun hashtag to see what was going on and found there were quite a lot of people (“oh cool this show I love has an active fandom yay!”) AND that pretty quickly a whole renewal campaign kicked up. Having come from the Lucifer fandom (after it was saved already) I knew how much fun these things could be from friends who had already done that kind of thing.
Sooo I gladly participated in that and made a discord server for a little twitter group chat that were active, friendly and chaotic. As time went on and still no renewal, I got more and more passionate that there HAD to be more. The discord server that was just for a little group began growing to a couple hundred people and they all were also passionate too and it really felt like something important. So when the news of cancellation came… well… I remember I was very upset at the news, but the minute I came home I just put my bag down, stared resolutely and calmly at my computer and said “no, absolutely not”. Annndddd then began the REAL chaos lol. Suddenly my discord server grew to a couple THOUSAND people and no task felt impossible when you are charging at Netflix with an army of THOUSANDS by your side.
I saw the infamous KTY space and hopped on for a while (my first twitter space ever) and then found from that later the space from Ari and Kayy. They spoke with such conviction that I also felt and so when they called for people to dm them who could do certain jobs I was absolutely ready and RARING to go. I offered my services in music writing and then a couple of days later found I was co lead of the video editing department (despite never doing that before) but that’s another chaotic and fun story for another time. Overall, I wanted the show back A LOT but what made me want to personally join the fight for it was an overwhelming need to feel useful and involved in something that really meant a lot. If you see a stampede running past you towards something you love, sure it would be easier just to stand back and wait for them to catch it so you are saved a job, but one thing is for sure, that’s a whole lot less fun and fulfilling.
OCS: How did you get into crafting?
Lucy: I’ve loved art since a very young age. I started taking classes at the age of 6 and have had a very on and off relationship with it ever since. This passion made its way onto digital art in my teens, which has remained one of my main interests ever since.
Coco: Crafting itself is something that my mum and I have always done together. She is a very crafty person and used to work as a candle carver. She taught me how to do beadwork, make cards, knit scarves and hats and that crafting takes a while but is very rewarding at the end. My wider family on both sides are talented artists but I always went down the music route rather than the art route. Now that I am at university for music, I find that in my downtime doing something else is a nice break for my brain so art is where I have turned.
I first started trying out Fan Art in the Lucifer fandom as a way to interact with people on twitter and I found it so much fun that I kept doing it and began thus teaching myself how to do digital (and occasionally traditional) art. Doing art as a part of fandoms is a special thing because the art has a meaning attached to it through the show/film already and so is different from a lot of other art in that way. It is a great way of making fan fiction/headcanons come to life and thus really enriches the fandom spaces. I started my own redbubble after a while, mostly because I wanted to buy some of my own art (lol) but also because some people had requested a place to get some of it. I was honestly amazed when I got a sale and after a while I realised that on all the different social media platforms and websites, a lot more people were in fandoms hungry for art/content than I could possibly imagine. Fan art for me is a brilliant way of connecting with people in a fandom and thus of making friends. As for the physical prints of that art? They are a way to proudly show in society that you are part of a group, that you care about these characters, and to make your every day life feel more like *you*. Fandom can be an escape from the real world but also a way to make your real life more fun and different from everyone else.
OCS: Have you done other conventions before? Which ones?
Lucy: I haven’t.
Coco: I have BEEN to conventions before (one big one in London, another smaller one in my home town and also most recently witchbomb), but never as a vendor. I have never even considered that *doing* one as a vendor was an option.
What made you decide to be a vendor at HaloBearerUK con?
Lucy: I knew I already had an audience thanks to my work on the Warrior Nun billboard as well as other fandom-lead efforts. I felt like it could be a good opportunity to share my art.
Coco: When halobearer put their tweet out about it, I automatically assumed the tweet was aimed at huge companies that would come in and sell… i don't even know what. Then I got a dm from Lucy saying something along the lines of “heyyy… want to team up?” I was amazed and very excited! Aside from the fact she is an absolutely amazing person who shares my study struggles and thus the connected food dish of *days old microwaved pasta* (don't judge shhhh), I really love her designs too. This is one of the main people who designed the BILLBOARDS for crying out loud! Of course SHE needed to be a vendor at the event, it would be so sad if her designs were not a part of it! And if she needed my help (as someone actually in the country of the event being able to get stuff ordered, shipped, stored, and dealt with on this end) to be able to do it then of course I was going to say yes.
OCS: What are some of the items you will be selling?
We will be selling:
4 different designs of t shirt, 3 black, one white.
2 different designs of hoodie
Tote bags
4 different designs of stickers
2 different designs of posters (either to get signed or to decorate your room, or both!)
2 different designs of note books
2 differently coloured thread embroidered beanies. One white embroidery on black beanie and the other blue embroidery on black beanie.
We will also have 2 VERY VERY limited edition special items that are designed and hand made by me, but you will have to come to our stall to find out what those are!
OCS: Can you talk about the process for making one of your favorite items?
Coco: My favourite item is the blue embroidered beanie. Honestly I never wear hats, let alone beanies because I think they make me look like an elf and my hair goes full pompom when I take them off, but I really REALLY this particular beanie. The blue is my favourite colour, the beanie quality is amazing (it's softer than I expected), and the embroidery just looks so pretty.
First of all we decided we wanted the warrior nun logo on the beanies as the space that can be used is long and thin like text. I found a local printer who had examples of their work and let me see exactly what beanies they would use and after checking that the quality was great and the price was reasonable (but by no means the cheapest on the market), I sent them the artworks, one in white and one in blue. It was wonderful a couple of days later to see a digital rendering of how the embroidery would look, it is so cool that computers can do that. It looks stunning to be honest and it looks even better now that they are all printed and I can hold it in my hand. The thread colour is gorgeous, you can almost imagine the divinium thread glowing on the hat. The company that did the hoodies and shirts for us also did the beanies so going along to pick up that order involved a sack truck, an empty boot (or trunk if you are on the other side of the pond), and a team of 5 people to help load it all. I felt bad not helping so I grabbed the beanie box that was the lightest and got the others to carry huge boxes of hoodies (hehe).
OCS: How much time have you put into con prep?
Lucy: As far as making the designs and getting them ready for print, I’d say tens to hundreds of hours. There are a lot of very detailed pieces which take a long time.
Coco: WAY TOO MUCH!
This was very much a team effort with Lucy, Kelsey, and Adrienne and I could not have done my part of the work without them! Also, huge shout out to everyone in the vendor group chat. You are all absolutely wonderful, hard working people and being able to chat with you all about advice and generally shared experiences as vendors was honestly one of the best things about this whole vendor adventure.
So, time…
First of all, it took ages to work out which items we wanted to do, which would be feasible and what would people actually *want* to buy. And then once we knew that, we had to work out the numbers of stock of each. This was one of the hardest parts because we have never done this before and the convention would not tell us how many tickets were actually sold, so it was a rough estimate and a bit of a gamble. Then which designs would we put on what different item? Does this look good on a t- shirt, or would it be better on the tote bag?
And then FINALLY the most difficult part of all: finding all the many different places that would print all of the elements of stock for the best price, within the time frame, and with a great quality too. I really thought this part would be easier since there are always adverts for everything we need but you quickly realise that the cheap places are cheap for a very excellent reason. Shout out to the vendor chat for helping me realise that £4 for a printed shirt was indeed too cheap and that in fact the £4 was the price for the printing itself on the one shirt and did not actually include the shirt itself (whoopsies)...
Anyway, I tracked down some sellers in my local area, ran around getting quotes like a headless chicken and then brought it all back to the team. We worked out which would be the best prices, the best quality and could print it all in time. We ended up using 5 different companies for the 6 products which of course meant MOUNTAINS of emails, phone calls, art proof adjustments and samples. It also means my house is now a warehouse with mountains of boxes filled with LOADS of shirts, hoodies, posters, notebooks, beanies and everything. The cats are excited to have the boxes once they are empty that’s for sure!
It has been a stressful couple of months trying to ensure everything would be prepared but after all the ordering was done, it was one of the most wonderful experiences to unbox them all and see all our hard work pay off. All the products look AMAZING and I really really want to keep them but I think I might get in trouble for that lol. Unboxing and then sharing the pictures of them to Lucy, Kelsey and Adrienne was exactly like Christmas and we all felt really proud and even more excited to show you what we cooked up at the convention!
So yes it took a very very long time and I should absolutely have been studying for all of that time BUT it was so worth it!
OCS: If people would like more information about your products after the con, where can they go?
Lucy: They can DM me on twitter or go to my website
Coco: Designs: Most of the designs are Lucy’s so dming @lucydesigns0 on twitter would be your best bet for that but the two avatrice sticker designs are mine so feel free to DM me about those! I am @Coco_Cat38 on twitter and instagram and @CocoCat38 on redbubble and discord so come say hi and have a look around!
For more information about print shops, garments used, print styles, washing instructions, printing processes or any of that kind of stuff dm me at @Coco_Cat38 on twitter and insta or @CocoCat38 on discord.