BOYCC Report - Swag!

There is so much I want to share about the recent Bring Out Your Chinas Convention (BOYCC). The format was an experiment conceived by Joan Berkwitz of Pour Horse Pottery and Addi Hude of Brightly Hude Studio, and there is so much to say about it that it will take several posts (and a few more days of sleep for my part).

I did want to share some photos of the "Swag Bags", which are pictured above. Those are actually the Day 1 Swag Bags. So many things were created as giveaways for the show that a second set of bags were required for the second day of the show! My own contribution - the handmade name tags discussed in previous posts - were actually handed out separately so that we didn't have to match the bags to their owners. It was work enough just filling all the bags!



Here are a few of the items: a ceramic mug with one of the early Pour Horse logos. The roll of blue cloth is a lint-free towel for cleaning dust and debris from ceramics; these were extremely handy for those of us who took the workshop in china painting! The retractable white brush in front came from Kristina Francis. To the right is a memory book for attendees to sign. It was one of my favorite things from the event, although I am sorry that judging kept me too busy to sign as many as I wished.



More swag! From the top left there is a cartoon pony keychain (my son already claimed it) and a plastic piggy with tiny dominos (again, claimed by my kids). The white paw prints are handmade soap, and they sit on a handmade koozie. There is a pen that reads "playing with mud" and a key fob that says "BOYC". To the lower left are some index cards for last minute show entries (boy was I glad for those!). Sitting on top of those is one of Karen Gerhardt's pins in a pretty lavender porcelain. We used the same pin in glossy white for her overglazing workshop. (Mine is, not surprisingly, so far from done that there is no point in photographing it yet.) The two small buttons were done by Melissa Gaulding. She made enough for everyone to trade, and I ended up with two appaloosa foals. I am still kicking myself for not taking the time to find someone willing to trade the splash overo one.



Lynn Fraley of Laf'n Bear sent some of her bear tiles. I really liked the blue-green glaze on this one.



Sarah Minkiewicz-Breunig included one of her Dancing Horse tiles. Sarah sent a truly staggering number of tiles for gifts and awards. I was lucky enough to win several of them, and will include pictures in later posts about the show and Saturday night's award dinner. I am afraid all they did was succeed in making me greedy for more of them, so I hope that she stocks some in her Etsy store soon. (hint, hint)



Another big hit from the swag bags were these candy parrots, made by Jen Kroll. She did a number of different color patterns and I was fortunate to take quite a few home. I didn't have the heart to eat them, though.



I couldn't eat these, either. Liz Holm donated custom-printed M&Ms with "BOYC 2011", "Shiny!" and a silhouette of the HR Morgan Stallion. I didn't know that could be done, but here is the site for ordering them.

I didn't have to eat them, though, because the bags were filled with all manner of snack foods - and that was on top of all the meals that were provided as part of the event.



And finally there was this guy. He was part of the booty Sarah sent down for the show. I had seen them on Sarah's blog post and coveted them. My roommate Katie Gehrt won this one (my favorite!) as a door prize and gave him to me. It made my day! He sat next to my laptop during the horse color presentation, so that I would see him each time I changed a slide. It was almost like having Sarah right there, which of course made it impossible to be nervous.

I will post more about the workshops and the show and the presentation in the next few days. I want to tell as much as possible about BOYCC in hopes that more people will consider using it as a template for future events.