To participate in the costume contest, the first thing you have to do is sign up, here at our registration table, manned by Jason and William as Dale and Hank from King of the Hill.

Here's our awesome new Cosplayer trophies for this year.

Starting last year, we invited the top winners to be guest judges for the costume contest.  Last year's first guest judge was Brice Garcia.  This year's guest judges are Valerie Marten- Ellis and Kayla Robertson-Jones.

Cosplayer Rhiannon as Newt Scamander during the Pre-judging portion of the contest.  Contestants are asked to talk about their process and explain their methods, challenges, basically giving the judges and run through of how they designed and built their costume.

Contestants are asked to provide documentation of their process.  This is the handout done by Marissa Forest, for her Padme's handmaiden cosplay.

These are the Handmade and Props and Armour contestants modeling their costumes during the Pre-judging portion of the contest.

Here are the costume contest winners with Miss Cynthia Lee Fontaine, our celebrity guest MC for the night.  We modified our categories slightly from last year's.  This years categories were Costume Casual, Semi-Hand Made, Hand-Made, Groups and Duos, and Props and Armour.  We awarded trophies for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in each division, as well as a Judge's Choice Award, and a Best in Show Award.

Costume Casual 1st Place ­ Nadia Ramadan, 2nd Place ­ Jasmine Guerra, 3rd Place ­ Erik White.
Duos/Groups 1st Place ­ Nicole Waterman, Erin Lee, & Ana Nevorez, 2nd Place ­ Izabel Weaver & Kori Camp, 3rd Place ­ Mia & London.
Semi­Handmade 1st Place ­ Rhiannon Schlickeisen, 2nd Place ­ Megan Viney, 3rd Place ­ Nicole Tierney.
Props/Armor 1st Place ­ Catt Victory 2nd Place ­ Aaron (no last name given)
Handmade 1st Place ­ Jeffrey Rusco, 2nd Place ­ Marissa Forrest, 3rd Place ­Alyssa King.
Judges’ Award Kayla Freeman
Best in Show Alyssa Garcia del Solar

Winners:  1st Place ­ Izabel Weaver, 2nd Place ­ Alyssa Garcia del Solar, 3rd Place ­ Mei Davis

This year we had a wide variety of talents: singers, dancers, musicians, comics.

Judges this year were Lauren Knowles, and David Mervin.

Winners

Every year I man a table to recruit students for the McLennan Theatre program.  Last year our table also served as the McLennan Alumni Cosplayers group table where we offered a Cosplay Hospital for needy cosplayers to both mend their costumes and their bodies with hot glue and bandaids,  safety pins and Tylenol.  You get the idea.  I gave out a lot of packets this year.  Like last year, star student Brice Garcia helped me man it, as well as my husband.

I wrote a blog on this subject awhile ago and Jason suggested that I do it as a panel.  So, I presented it Friday evening and Saturday morning.  There were maybe 6 or 8 attendants each session.  Not nearly as many as I would have hoped, but the people who were there were very passionate about the subject.   I first explained why I wrote the blog and then opened it up for questions and comments.  The idea was to promote a conversation about the topic.  The interesting thing that I noticed, is that the men in the group spoke first and often.  The women in the audience sat there and waited for the men to finish speaking and the younger onesespecially had to be coaxed to speak out. I even learned something new: there's an app called Life360 which keeps track of you and your family members in case someone gets snatched.  We immediately had all the kids download it.  It works really well unless you leave your phone at home or on a Charter Bus to Dallas, like Sarah did the very next week.

This year they rebranded the Harry Potter Yule Ball.  It has become the Cosplay Ball.  Brice went all out for it, doing a new steampunk costume, with a handmade leather corset

Lynda Carter was scheduled to appear at the con on Sunday, May 5, which happens to be my birthday.  I was so excited I couldn't contain my joy.  The first costume I ever designed for a human, rather than a Barbie, was for my sister for her birthday.  She wanted to be Wonder Woman.  My mom even made her a WW cake.  She already had a red bathing suit, so I just made her a crown and bracelets out of paper that I colored with markers.  The cape was also paper.  I got some twine for her golden lasso and then mom took a photo of her tying me and my friend Denise up with it.  My plan was to print out that old photo in a larger size (after a suitable amount of editing for wear and tear in photoshop) and get her to autograph it.  I just wanted an opportunity to tell her how much I loved the show and how she was my hero.  However,  that didn't happen.  The only was to get to see her was to buy tickets to her already sold out musical performance that evening.  She wasn't going to be table sitting and signing during the day like everyone else. So very disappointed.  I was CRUSHED!  But I took my photo anyway in the hopes of maybe getting to see her.  Instead they had a merch table with this stand up, so I took a photo with that.  Then Rob bought me another T-shirt and some magnets.  Oh well.  You can't always get what you want.

At this con last year a theatre group from Austin was giving out badges to promote their production of "Stalking John Barrowman".  We got the badges, but never got to see the musical.  This year our mission was to literally stalk John Barrowman with our badges on our costumes.  Rob bought me a photo-op with him which we did Saturday and then came back Sunday to get him to autograph it.  He's fabulous and gives great hugs.  But he didn't even notice our badges, either day.

We got to meet Mark Sheppard, whom we love in everything he does: Doctor Who, Supernatural, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Doom Patrol etc..  He was super sweet.  We also got to meet the best Lex Luthor ever, Michael Rosenbaum from Smallville.  Rob got to meet DC comic book artist Jim Lee who signed his copy of Hush for free!  Later Rob got it signed by Scott Williams too.  This year it was all about the DC guys.  And I met Ejen Chuang and bought his book, Cosplay in America, and then he signed it for me.  He took our picture in our Justice League Dark costumes, so maybe we'll end up in his next book.

We took some makeup and hair shots of Rob turning in Swampy before we left.  The Braum's employees totally didn't get it.  Once we got there, we got some more photos done of our Justice League Dark cosplay with Superhero Photos.  They said they would add the magic in for my bandages but they didn't.  At the DC booth we got to be photoshopped into the Doom Patrol.  That was awesome!  Everyone at the Con knew Rob was Swamp Thing, but no one knew who I was except the DC guy, Scott Williams.  We didn't have the kids there, so I showed him the photo Briumbra took of us.  He was super impressed.

Sunday Rob got to take his picture as Shazam!  And I made him take his photos in front of a wall of Wham! albums from Deadpool, because I am Marvel girl.  Rob took his photo with Zatana, unfortunately it was Sunday and we were out of costume.  We saw a cute family of hobbits and a Gandalf Daddy.  Best of all we saw our friend Jennifer Dunham!

Rob found the hotel.  It was within walking distance of the Con.  It was cheap and almost brand new.  There's a pool, but we didn't bring our suits.  The decor is wildly literate.  We took a ton of photos.  The had a little breakfast shack for coffee and muffins which was very reasonable.  I think we spent about $20 on breakfast.  The inside restaurant was expensive so instead we ate dinner at a nearby Indian food restaurant, which was also great and cheap.  The only thing that surprised us when we checked out is that we had to pay to leave our car in the parking lot, not valet, just to park there overnight.  That was $20.  Rob said the hotel cost us about $150 for one night.