Cake the Cat and Fionna the Human!

"It WAS a date! There was singing and junk!"

Scrambling to get some new art together for Baltimore Comic Con in a couple weeks! I'll be in Artist Alley with Little Asian Sweatshop and Maria Danalakis Art!

My *6th* year attending in Artist Alley!

 Did some more chibi-pairings that I use for mini prints and magnet sets! I managed to get the above Fionna and Cake from Adventure Time art to the printers in time for Baltimore Con, so I'll have 5"x7" mini prints of these two for the show! Also doing two more pairings- which I should have magnet sets of but unfortunately won't have prints in time, of Tex Avery's Red Hot and The Wolf, and of my absolute hero in life Pee-Wee Herman and Miss Yvonne, the Most Beautiful Woman in Puppetland!

"Oh Wolfie!"

SCREAM REAL LOUD!

 It is as I feared, though. I draw two Pee-Wee's Playhouse characters and now I want to draw EVERYONE.

Aftermath: HeroesCon 2013

Another HeroesCon down in the books!

Little Asian Sweatshop, Maria Danalakis Art, and myself in Artist Alley!

After show drinks on Saturday!

Let it be known that this and Baltimore Comic Con are my two favorite shows of the year. HeroesCon is a fantastic show that is comic and artist focused and always has a fantastic guest list with amazingly friendly fans and attendees and a supportive staff who are ready and able to help you out with whatever it is you need. Heroes is the one show I will go out of my way to attend and is my main 'away' show where I stay at a hotel and actually socialize with fellow con folks after hours. 

OMG it's "Pee-Wee"!

My harlequin-print Jenny dress from Pinup Girl clothing!

Not that there isn't some criticism. This year seemed a transitional one for the show, after the insanity of last year's 30th anniversary show plus having Stan Lee as a guest it seemed the showrunners assumed that the enormous crowds of last year would carry through and had an even BIGGER floorplan than any year previous. What resulted was a GINORMOUS show floor with GIANT aisles that spread out the attendees so thin that it gave the illusion that the show was kinda dead all weekend. Which from the opinions I heard around resulted in a lack of enthusiasm from the fans and exhibitors and a lack of money being made at Artist Alley tables. I know there were large swaths of time where practically no one came by my table and I actually ::gasp:: SAT DOWN. I know, I know- I'm just as disappointed in myself. :\ 

ALSO- and by no fault of Heroes, traveling down this year was a NIGHTMARE. My husband and I will usually make a 2 day journey down to NC from NYC due to the sheer volume of merch I bring with me requiring us to drive. We'll take a Megabus down from NYC to Baltimore and borrow my parent's van, then we pick up Fenny in DC and drive the (what's supposed to be 7 hours) to Charlotte. Which we usually have done on Thursday, but figured we'd do it this year on Friday as that's a dead day anyways for most, and we assumed we'd get there at at 2ish since we were on the road at 7am. Ugh, but constant torrential downpours and traffic jams destroyed any hope for smooth sailing and setup on Friday was left for a hectic final hour of the show that day. And I must admit I got really snippy with people who stopped to talk to me while I was trying to setup.  

"Little Stepford Sweatshop"

My husband Phil "Ballsy" Balsman and I!

All was not lost at Heroes however. While I did financially take a hit this year (hopefully the rest of this year's shows will fare better on my wallet), one of the things that makes the show really worth it at the end is the Dead Dog party for all the professionals/workers/volunteers on Sunday night after the show at the comic shop that throws it, Heroes Aren't Hard to Find. The after party has an awesome spread of tacos, beer and I got some discounted comics- though as always when I actually go into a brick-and-mortar comic shop I get a case of buyer's amnesia and forget EVERYTHING I want to buy. What's super-duper awesome about the afterparty is also that it gives me a chance to mingle and catch up with my contemporaries and I even got some hugs *initiated* by some longtime artistic heroes, which put me on cloud 9. Especially since I'm chained to my table during con hours and rarely get a break to pee let alone go around and talk to people. I also for the third year in a row donated art to the Heroescon Saturday art auction, this year it being the original to my chibi Poison Ivy pinup, which went to a huge fan of the character. Which I'm aways glad to see.

So very, very tired.

Me and my FAVE cosplayer DJ Spider as golden age Batwoman!

Something I did notice however with Heroes regarding my own work is that this being my 6th year tabling I feel like I'm starting to get pigeonholed as the 'pin-up girl'. Which is awesome thing to be known for and I love the genre, but my true passion has always been comics and I feel like there's so much more artistically I can offer. Like drawing guys. And ugly people. And having characters act in a way other than 'Were you just looking at my bum, naughty boy?' So I'm trying to really focus on actually putting out my magnum opus comic Pearly Whites in the next 5 years, which is honestly a VERY generous time frame and it will hopefully be in even less time then that. I already started my final character designs and I've been writing and outlining like crazy trying to streamline 15 years worth of story notes into a cohesive narrative that doesn't suck. Thankfully my BFF Fenny of Little Asian Sweatshop was an English Lit major in college and is helping me out with all the fine tuning and is an AMAZING sounding board for ideas. Look for future blog entries where I'll share some tidbits on the craziness that is Pearly Whites. 

I'm on Funny or Die!!!!

So yeah, remember when I got to meet and get my picture with Pee-Wee a month ago when he did that Foursquare promo?

Well, the VIDEO of his adventures around NYC is up on FunnyorDie.com and you can see a certain bespectacled punker girl reduced to utter speechlessness at 2:58! Like really, my hands were shaking and I thought I might burst into tears.

Pee-wee's Foursquare Day! from Pee-wee Herman

And just to show you how much I LOOOOOVE Pee-Wee, here's a couple pics from last year's Halloween when my fiance Phil and I dressed up as Miss Yvonne and Capn' Carl. BEFORE I EVEN KNEW HE WAS MAKING HIS BIG COMEBACK!

***BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!***

So this Saturday was my big 30th birthday!

But also, my boyfriend of 5 1/2 years and love of my life- Phil Balsman aka 'Ballsy' PROPOSED TO ME!! XD


I had no idea what he was planning...

We had quite a weekend planned- Friday I had a small gathering of friends over at one of my new favorite mixology bars The Randolph at Broome on the Lower East Side for some happy hour madness. Lots of drinking! Lots of catching up with friends! I was two-fisting Texas Porch Sippers all night! What a great opener for an amazing weekend!






Then on Saturday my most bestest friend in the world Fenny and her husband J came up from Washington, DC to accompany us on my actual birthday to the Pee-Wee Show on Broadway!! I LOVE PEE-WEE!!! He's my childhood hero! He taught me that not only is it ok to be weird but to revel in my individuality. We had 2nd row center seats! When the curtain came up on the Playhouse I cried, like ALOT! It was amazing! I was THERE! Suddenly I was 7 years old again! I was bouncing up in down in my seat I was so excited!!! We were so close you could see the spittle come out of Pee-Wee's mouth! I didn't want it to end!


Post Pee-Wee glow

After we saw Pee-Wee we had dinner reservations at Havana Central, a Cuban restaurant with awesome drinks and awesomer steaks on 46th street in Times Square. I loooove me some Chimichurri sauce!!!




So slightly tipsy and carrying a 'steak baby', we walked down 46th on what was an unusually quiet strip of street for being Times Square on a Saturday night. Especially being the Saturday night before Halloween. ("Deviiiiil's Niiiight!") So in search of a cab, we head away from Times Square towards 7th Avenue when Phil gets an odd look and ushers me across the street to the arched door of an old school. Perplexed, I thought he was trying to get a little smootchy make-out session before Fenny and J caught up. But he gave them a nod and said to me very low 'I've got something I wanna ask you....' and I saw him dig a black ring box out of his jacket pocket... (queue video)



Which is when this happened.

As it turned out, Fenny had known for MONTHS about Phil's plans. Which is incredible, Fenny and I have no secrets between us. I'm impressed how well she kept it under wraps, as I had NO IDEA. My parents knew about it 3 days before he proposed, he called them to ask for their blessing and Fenny picked up the heirloom engagement ring my grandmother has held onto for me since I was a wee one to bring up to NYC. Phil called his parents to let them know what was up after the Pee-Wee show let out and he had 'popped out for a smoke' while I was at the merch booth. Completely clueless as to what was going on...




So yeah!!! At 11:45 on October 30th 2010- Phil Balsman asked Paige Pumphrey to marry him, and she said yes. ^_^

We're still planning everything, but we have set the date and we'll be getting married for sure on November 2nd of 2011 (on Dia de los Muertos) in Las Vegas by Elvis. So so soooo excited! XD

Today's secret word is: HOLY SHIT!

AAAAAAHHHH!



Soooo... I follow Pee-Wee on Twitter and he said he was going to be at Katz delicatessen at noon, so I BOLTED down there from work (in Midtown) and actually got to meet him and give a fan testimonial! He was going around the city all day today for a promo thing with foursquare and his upcoming Broadway show, which I'm actually going to for my 30th birthday at the end of the month (2nd row center) as a birthday gift from my BFF Fenny.
Let me just say- this was a dream come true. My hands were shaking so bad when I met him. Pee-Wee is totally my childhood hero and one of the first people in life who taught me that it's totally awesome to be yourself, no matter how quirky that might be.