Ipsy GenBeauty 2018

My sister invited me to last year’s GenBeauty last minute and I had a lot of fun in just a few short hours so of course I was interested in checking it out again this year.

We brunched at Bluebird London at Columbus Circle that morning with a gorgeous view before heading over to the convention. I’m usually only passing by this area quickly so it’s a new location for me to adventure in. There are a lot of nice shops that I would love to take more time to browse one day next time I’m around the area. The service at brunch was good, the waiter was super cute and the food was delicious. The girls even wear Ted Baker dresses as their uniforms, how snazzy! Unfortunately we didn’t make it to their tea service since it’s only served certain days and certain times so I guess we’ll be returning for the gram for that pastry tower. If you’re lucky enough to get a window seat, it’s really something. It actually reminds me a little bit of my time in Paris. Oh, how I miss Paris! I still have yet to find time to blog about that for you guys too.

I basically lived at the Javits for the past 3 weekends it seems. It’s where all the conventions are held due to its abundance of space for vendors and set up of booths and content. The perks of this con is all the free products you swipe at each booth by simply scanning your badge. You learn about new indie brands and their products and get to test them out. You’re not obligated or pressured to buy anything since they bring limited product with them anyway. And the booths that do sell their products, sell at some pretty nice discounts compared to their retail prices. Meanwhile a lot of the free products you get are decently sized, if not full sized! For example, I stopped by the Wen booth because I just wanted to snap a pic on their floral swings but they ended up filling my bag with full sized hair products. I didn’t expect this so that was a pretty nice bonus. It’s really nice to get free products because it's a nice way to test out new products and new brands without having to feel like you wasted your money if it doesn’t turn out a winner. You also get to discover new brands this way that you might end up falling in love with, that you would’ve never heard of otherwise. This con is basically like a Costco buffet, but for makeup. You go from booth to booth just getting samples of new products. Not a bad deal if you ask me. If you like trying new products and learning about new indie brands as they hit the market, this is definitely a con for you. Or even if you don’t, if you love taking cute photos with Instagrammable backgrounds, this con is also the con for you. There were a lot of cute photo opportunities but unfortunately I didn’t get to do them all due to the time constraints and long waits towards the end of the day so I don’t have all the photo ops you could do pictured, but hopefully next year I can attend on a Saturday for full coverage of the event for once.

My sister also eyed the MAC booth and saw they had these shirtless muscle guys chilling in the middle to promote their brand and obviously try to get girls to flock over cause duh, eye candy. Except that’s not what she saw, hahaha. She dared me to go over and flex with them to make them feel small. I can’t resist a challenge so I walked over after we finished with the Wen booth and shut those boys down. They thought I was going to hit them with the hand on hip pose but I had my guns ready to go. They were like “SHEEEET. THIS GIRL DON’T PLAY.” #dead.

Towards the end of the convention at closing time, some booths started giving away a lot of their goods. They started throwing them into the crowds causing hordes of girls to run over and trample each other just to score some freebies. It was crazy. Mayhem ensued. I got hit in the head with makeup, hahaha!

We ended the day with Ichiran ramen and Sweet Gloria honey ice cream even though I’m not at goal yet for my weight loss but I’m still meeting all my targets so far so a little cheat was okay. I had a sample of Ichiran at Japan Fest over the summer and it was delicious so I was looking for an opportunity to try the full bowl of ramen with all its fixings. And it didn’t disappoint. Ichiran was so good I drank all the soup! I stumbled upon Sweet Gloria last week and man I’ve been craving honey ice cream all week so I had to go back. It’s so delicious. It’s a small and simple ice cream shop but so good! All in all, it was a nice weekend and a beautiful day with my girls.

NYHS's Harry Potter: A History of Magic

My best friend is a huge (understatement of the year) Harry Potter fan.

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I didn’t really get into it until just a few years ago. I ignored it in high school when my brother got into it because I was too busy being a stupid girl with emotions and teenage angst and going gaga over boys at the time. I watched the first movie a LOOOOONG time ago but I wasn’t really that into it. I fell asleep during all 3 of the LOTR movies as well. I don’t know why, I just wasn’t into those fantasy movies. But I think it’s because I’m more interested in stories with a female protagonist and pretty girls. I mean, I like dragons and castles and magical worlds, but I wasn’t in love with this vision of it. I’m superficial but there wasn’t enough “pretty” going on to draw me into these worlds.

In 2015, I went to Universal with my best friend on a spontaneous vacation and was introduced to Harry Potter World in the parks. I hadn’t been since I was about 15 or so, so it’s been quite a while and clearly a lot had changed. There was no Wizarding World part of the park back in 2003. It was a new experience for me and I found it pretty cool. I appreciated what they had built and that there was a train connected between the two parks, further immersing you into this world they brought to life. I rode the rides, visited the shops and explored the alleyways and corners. But I didn’t really understand it.

Over the next few years, I started traveling more with my friends and visits to the Orlando and Hollywood parks spiraled out of control. I started watching the movies, and then slowly got through the books. It took me a while because adulting and all other things I have going on in my daily life, but I finally finished the books this past summer. Better late than never, right?

Now all the rides and details of the park world makes sense to me when I revisit. And funny thing, I’ve visited three different Harry Potter Worlds now. I’ve been to the Universal in Orlando, Hollywood and the one in Osaka, Japan. They’re all similar but have their differences.

And this fall, my best friend wanted to visit the new Harry Potter exhibit at the New York Historical Society Museum that just opened up. We went on opening day, a Friday evening since all weekend tickets for October was sold out for the month. Actually almost all the weekends are sold out til late November! I didn’t think it would be this popular before it even opened but I’m not that well informed regarding the HP world and all its popularity.

If you’re a big Harry Potter nerd, I would definitely recommend you stop by this exhibit if you’re in the New York area. Buy your tickets in advance and if you still have your school ID like I do, cop that discount! It’s decently priced for what it is and will definitely fascinate your inner Potter nerd.

Unfortunately for this exhibit though, there is no photography allowed once you past through the exhibit walls. There’s artwork you can freely take photos of before you enter, and the gift shop itself is something to marvel at, but the actual walk-through is for your eyes only. I snuck two photos in so you can see what it looks like somewhat but I wasn’t able to get any good close up details of what the exhibit entailed. Although, photos can’t truly describe it. You need to see it for yourself to appreciate the work that went into the exhibit, as well as the work and research that JK Rowling put into creating this world and translating it into a literary dream.

There are letters, photos, drawings, storyboards, and other various pieces of history that they have displayed regarding how the books came to fruition. For example, you’ll see how JK Rowling envisioned Harry to look in her own caricature of him, versus other illustrators visions. There are letters of how the title came to be and why there are different versions for America and the UK. There are different halls, each devoted to the subjects that the students took in the book like herbology, divination, the Dark Arts, magical creatures, and potions. In each of those rooms, they had ancient books of magic, witchcraft and fantasy that had been the research and inspiration for JK Rowling. You can tell she poured a lot of work into this, meticulously planning every detail out, down to the character’s names, the spell names, and the details of how each creature was to appear.

One interesting thing I noted at the exhibit was that even for a Friday evening, it was quite busy and crowded so I wasn’t able to look at everything, but that the particular crowd there that night was not the demographic I had anticipated. I thought the attendees would be in my age group or younger but there were actually a lot of older people there too. It’s particularly extraordinary to see the many different faces, age groups, and styles of people drawn into Rowling’s wondrous fantasy. Originally supposed to be a children’s book, she probably never envisioned that this would spiral into such an obsession for such a wide audience of people, and spark into movies, theme parks, countless amounts of merchandise and more. It’s crazy because you’ll never known what will catch on and what doesn’t make the cutting room floor when it comes to fandoms.

In my honest opinion though, I do appreciate the world of Harry Potter but I didn’t catch onto it and dive in as heavily as some of my friends have. Maybe if the story had been about Hermione or another girl, I would’ve loved it more. I do find myself enjoying Harry Potter World more than the rest of the theme park when visiting Universal. One of my favorite places to eat is actually The Three Broomsticks. I love walking through the castle and the bank. There’s so much detail to look at while walking through the line that you never really mind the long wait since the buildings are a piece of work in itself to view.

Oh and if you’re wondering, hahaha. I was sorted into Slytherin by the hat in the WB Studio Tour in Hollywood. BUT, I had also been sorted by a friend many years ago before I read the books, as Fleur Delacour. I didn’t understand it at the time but once I finished the books, I found the comparison oddly fitting. I’ll take it since I never really gravitated towards any one of the original 4 houses. And Beauxbaton being a French foreign school is more fitting for my nature. I would wear their uniform over the Hogwarts one. It’s more my style.

The exhibit is also notably right next to the Museum of Natural History, one of my favorite museums in the city, if you’re looking for other things to do. (And if you’re not a New Yorker or maybe you are but just don’t know, this museum is a pay as you wish museum so you can get in and view most of the exhibits for as little as $1! It’s all suggested donation based unless you wish to view the planetarium shows and other special exhibits.)

NYCC 2018

NYCC has come and gone, like every year since 2013 when I first started attending. I attended again for a total of 4 days, but it feels like it happened in the blink of an eye.

I ended up deciding to redo old cosplays and it turned out refreshingly well. I really do enjoy cosplaying, but I don’t enjoy spending money on it anymore and putting together anything new. And I found there’s nothing wrong with rewearing my favorites since there are always new attendees, new crowds and well, I breathed some new life back into my old cosplays with my improved physique so the photos turned out pretty well. Unfortunately, I’m still waiting back on more photos from all the photographers I’ve worked with during that weekend so for right now, enjoy the quick preview edits by the ever lightning fast Jason Laboy and Boris Quezada. I’ll probably do another post of finished photos as soon as I get them all back and organized.

I still do enjoy cosplaying a lot. I love dressing up (duh) and being my favorite characters. I also found that in contrast to previous years where I stuck with a group, I did find it more freeing to enjoy the con on my own this year. It was easier to get through crowds and easier to dart through. I enjoyed both being on my own to shoot and look around and then meeting up with friends and family later on in the day to check out booths. It was a nice change of pace and I felt better not having anyone wait on me while I did my own thing photoshooting, which is what I spent a majority of the con doing since I still really do enjoy shooting, as well as cosplay.

The funny thing is I could tell you that you don’t need to be there all 4 days. That one day is all you need, but I could be both right and wrong about that. Yes, you can do the entire con in a day. But that all depends on what you’re there to do. If you’re just there to browse the booths and buy merchandise, you can probably do a lot if not all in a day. But some days feature some things more than others on certain days, and there are also different types of panels on different days. And if you’re there to check out cosplay, you’ll see a lot on any day you pick, but you won’t see everything. You might just miss a particular gem if you go a different day. But the other thing about NYCC is that it’s so big, you might still not see everything somehow. For example, I was there all 4 days, but some people still missed me somehow. And some people saw me there all 4 days. So there’s really no right or wrong answer if you were to ask me how many days or which days you should choose to attend. If you’re on a budget, I would say go on Thursday. Thursdays to me, are actually my favorite days. It’s the least crowded, the first day so you have first dibs on all the merchandise, albeit not the best sales since they leave that till the last day but you’re guaranteed to get the t shirt you want in your size. It’s also the cheapest day of the cons in terms of badge prices. And usually easiest to purchase badges. There’s always Thursday tickets still left while Fri-Sun sell out quickly. Don’t let that fool you though. It doesn’t mean Thursdays suck. The same booths are still there all 4 days. The quality of content you’ll experience is not relative to the price of the badge, nor the number of attendees.

I took some photos of the convention center and some cool stuff I saw at booths but honestly it’s not the same. You just have to attend and see for yourself. The figures, the big displays, the artwork, the beautifu wares you can buy that the vendors bring in, the experiences you can take away, the photos, the different content in all the booths. It’s a lot. In short though, I found I still love NYCC and can see myself coming back again next year. I had a lot of fun this year despite not seeing a lot of the con due to shoots. I want to say maybe I’ll choose 4 different old cosplays, but at the same time, I really did love the 4 I chose this year and would have no problem bringing them back again next year. I’m not concerned if I become a one trick pony - I’m totally okay with those being my signature cosplays.

I also attended the Bruno Mars concert on Thursday night after the convention and I’ll keep this segue short but Bruno is just amazing in concert. He gives it his all as a performer and puts on a great show. I would say he’s this generations’ Michael Jackson with how talented he is at song, dance, performing, everything. My only disappointment is that he didn’t sing Gorilla, which is my favorite song from him. But everything else was absolutely over the top. He had glitter, he had pyrotechnics, he had rainbow lights, he had lasers, he had it all. He’s definitely worth his concert price.

Friday night was a busy day and night for me as well. In the morning I stopped by the New York Magic Lab pop-up and in the evening I visited the New York Historical Society’s Harry Potter exhibit (that blog post is also soon to follow) before heading to my early birthday dinner celebration (aka birthday dinner #1 because I’m extra and need 5 outfits, 3 cakes and a holiday to celebrate).  This was one of my favorite parts of the weekend, simply spending time with my favorite people. It was just really nice. I’m walking into my 30s with all smiles. Life is good when you’re surrounded with the best things in life and the best people. And you’re looking and feeling your best finally.

Saturday was a nice slow day, in terms of no crazy plans having me run all over the city. I simply enjoyed the con and then went to dinner with my best friend and tried out a new restaurant and new ice cream shop. I was watching what I ate for the most part that weekend so I allowed myself little cheats here and there and it ended up being fine because when I returned home Sunday night and weighed myself, no progress was lost so score!

Sunday was the last day and another easy slow day. I went to dinner with my family afterwards and tried more new dessert shops with them before finally heading home. I still have yet to go through the pile of business cards in my bag from everyone who snapped a pic of me. Fingers crossed I can get some decent photos back. If you were one of the few who snapped a nice pic, please email them to me!