Dispatch From LA

GIVEAWAY #2

Lady Luck has smiled on Magpie commenter  #140!!!!  Happy Tuesday!  Have your people call my people.  You'll get hooked up.

Next week I'll spin the wheel of fortune again and draw another name.  Because you're nice and I like you.

48 Degrees Gusty Winds From The North

On this cold, rainy Los Angeles night as cloud piles move overhead and wind blows and rattles the windows of Moss Cottage, I deliver a poem.  That I took the liberty of cutting into pieces.  Because when I'm not cutting paper scraps I'm cutting up poems.  Here.

God bless the experimental writers.

...help them as they
type away, knowing their readers
are few, only those who love to toil
over an intricate boil of language,
who think books are secret codes.

Every day they
tack improbable word onto im-
probable word...

by Corey Mesler

 

My sister sent me that poem.  My other sister sent me a long envelope today.  I thought it was a letter.  Inside 2 security envelopes. 

Goodnight.  Back tomorrow with the winner of the giveaway!

Tonight's Low 47 Degrees Under Mostly Cloudy Skies

Somewhere deep in my late Autumn brain are thoughts that have nothing to do with paper scraps and fabric bits.   Wild delicious excitements are rising and cresting.  Great waves of ideas one behind the other.  All to do with paper and fabric.  Every. Single. One.

 

Cat has a silent dialogue playing in his head too.  It goes like this:

eat. sleep. find projects to lay upon.  look cute.  turn art blog into cat blog.

 

Flouncy apricot roses are sensing the cooler weather and blooming like crazy in the unkempt garden out back.  Rain is coming tomorrow.  I don't think shiny purple rainboots are out of the question.

I believe I rounded up all the stray pre-registration people who fell through the cracks.  But maybe not.  I wasn't clear in my last post about where to leave a comment for the giveaway.  Go to the REMAINS OF THE DAY post to leave it.  I'm giving away a class every Tuesday in December.  Thank you x 1000 for kind emails & comments about the class blog.  It's a labor of love.  Really and truly.  I was just thinking today that making an online class is very similar to what I normally do:   Make stuff and talk to myself aloud while doing it.  hmmmm.

If you are currently enrolled in STITCHED & STENCILED this is for you:

If you enrolled before 10/1/09 I've extended your time until March 2010.  If you enrolled after 10/1/09 nothing has changed.

An Elf

A big serving of cold and grey in the City of Angels today.   Too much sunshine causes my smooth thoughts to become jagged.  Rain is in the forecast for next week!  It's 56 degrees outside!  Not enough cool weather to smooth out my thoughts yet.  Bear with me.  An elf sent me some Christmas fabric.  So I made a toaster cover!

 

Look at me!  Look at me NOW!  Stop sewing paper together and making toaster covers and pet me.  Or I will do something bad.

 

But first let me go lay down.  On top of your projects.

I think.  I think I sent every last one of you pre-registered boys and girls your registration link.  I started some last night and finished the rest this morning.  Um... I think I got all of you.  But maybe I didn't.  If a few of you slipped by I apologize.  Zip me out an email and I'll take care of you.   Enclose the original message you sent when you pre-registered, that will help cut down on any search and rescue I might have to do.

Regular registration has begun for REMAINS OF THE DAY .  If you pre-registered use the link I sent you, don't use the BUY  NOW button.   Don't forget to put your name in the hat over HERE .  Not on this post.  On the REMAINS OF THE DAY post.  If you already dropped in your name last week you're set!  I'm drawing each Tuesday in December from the same pool of names.  Make sense?

Off to toss another log in the fire and curl up with a hot toddy and a book!

Happy Birthday Lewis

In a stunning reversal of tradition, the breakfast club went out for dinner & cocktails!    On a weeknight.  GASP!  To this splendid corner table.  Which overlooked the whole glittering metropolis spread out below us.  

Happy Birthday Lewis.  I enjoyed every bite, every sip, every word.

oops

Last night while finishing up work on REMAINS OF THE DAY I inadvertently posted information in a POST that was meant for a PAGE.  The PAGE was my registration link where I'll be sending all of you darling people who have pre-registered.  My bad!

I apologize for the confusion.  On 12/5 you'll get your email from me w/ link for registration.

By the time I clicked PUBLISH it was too late to retract the post from going out to all the various blog readers you're subscribed to.  So while it only stayed on the blog for a hot minute before I removed it, it's permanently in the readers.  Ignore.  Was never meant for public postdom.

Thanks to everyone who's contacted me about this!

GIVEAWAY #1

Lists have been made.  Names have been numbered.  The Random Number Generator has been spun!

Terri D.  comment  #53  is the first of 5 winners of a Get In Free pass to REMAINS OF THE DAY.   I'll have my people contact your people, Terri.  Congrats!

The next drawing for a free pass to class will be on December 8th.  See you then!  If you already left a comment, you're set.  I'm drawing from the exact same pool, including of course, any newcomers between now and then.  If you're already registered when your name is drawn I will zip you out a Paypal refund, or rip up your check.

All of you lovely pre-registered lads & lasses will be sent your registration link on 12/5.  The class blog is awaiting your arrival!

Saturday Night 56 Degrees & Breezy

The last few weeks of school before the holidays.  It's craft central in the little class in the big city.   I meant to show these the other day.

 

Give us fabric, glitter glue, and googly eyes and we will make turkeys.

And also we took a fieldtrip last week where we saw this...

 

and this...

 

which was at least 5 feet tall.   Otherwise I would have put it in my pocket and carried it home. 

But more on that later.  It's 10 p.m.  I'm still in my pajamas.   I've been hard at work up here in Moss Cottage.  Doing...you know...things.  I'm going to fall into bed now.  But before I do THANK YOU.  Again. 

I received your pre-registrations for class.  And exceptionally kind comments and emails.

One of the C.M. drew a picture of me on our field trip.  And I one of her as we studied each other from across the table.  My teeth look exactly like that.

 

yes they do.

Thanksgiving Love

Belated Thanksgiving greetings to each and every one of you who stops by for a visit, whether on rare or frequent occasion.  My daily life is made richer because of it.   In my heart of hearts I am just a big overgrown craft monkey who digs show & tell.  My artistic inner life has blossomed under your constant warm attention.  And for that I am deeply and truly thankful.

xo,

Mary Ann & the cat posse

The Latest PURE EXPERIMENTATION Online Class Has Arrived!

$60

DETAILS:

• registration begins 12/05/09  class starts anytime you decide after 12/15/09
• at least 20 high quality videos
• at least 20 pages of full-color PDF
• at least 5 pages of digital collage elements for download (labels, tabs, numbers, words, journaling spots)
• full access to REMAINS OF THE DAY class blog and all of its videos & content until December 1, 2010
• a Yahoo group where you can yack with your classmates to your heart's content
• a Flickr group where you can show off what you make and get positive feedback
• sewing machine is required
• leave 1 comment on this page and I will be doing a drawing for a giveaway of 1 free class each Tuesday @ 5 pm in December.  I will dip into this pool of comments for each Tuesday giveaway.  Get your comment in NOW and you'll have 5 chances to win the free class!

• SUPPLY LIST = scraps of paper, security envelopes, fabric, sewing machine, quilting thread, 1 yard of waxed linen, regular or bookbinding needle, scotch tape, packing tape, your choice of dry adhesive (I'm using a glue stick),  any kind of camera
• A fast computer & high-speed internet service to process & watch the videos will be vital.   If you are regularly able to watch videos of up to 10 minutes in length w/o interruption you should be just fine.   Do make sure though, since tuition is non-refundable once your password to the class blog has been sent.
  

Ready for another dose of arty excavating and experimenting?  Ready to go on a wild and delicious archeological dig in your very own art studio?  Then climb on board and join me in another round of Pure Experimentation! 

REMAINS OF THE DAY - A Shabby Journal of Scraps is the antidote for all of those paper scraps that keep multiplying in your favorite scrap box and clogging up your artistic super highway.

In this process AND project oriented class we'll be constructing a shabby but sturdy journal using all that paper you've been hoarding.  I'll show you how I built the kind of travel journals that my sister and I carried with us on our trip to Portugal this summer.  Both of those were filled to capacity in 10 days and you'll do the same with yours without ever leaving home!  Instead of postcards, we'll use photos from our daily lives.  The book I make with you will be a completely different  book than the ones pictured here, but with a similar structure and content.

Using simple art supplies like tape, staples, glue sticks, scissors, paper & fabric scraps, and your favorite inky pen we'll set out on a recycled voyage of discovery.   ORDINARY life never looked better than seen through the pages of this stitched up journal of scraps.  Between these pages you'll be recording the little days that are all too easily forgotten.  The small activities between the bigger events of your life that get left behind.

The journal you see below is a class sample.  The one we build in class will be BIGGER, juicier, and more fabulous!  Better still it will be super sturdy.  Swat away pick pockets or toss across the room.  NOT A PROBLEM.

PLEASE NOTE:  This is not a sewing course, but a sewing machine is required.  I am not a seamstress.  I cheerfully employ guerrilla sewing tactics. 

THIS is the machine I use.  It's inexpensive, VERY sturdy, and sews through anything.

Once your shabby journal is constructed I'll show you how to start filling it up.  The book we make will be different in construction, but similar in content to THIS one.  I completed it in 2 weeks.   Think of it as a perfect place to deposit your deep thoughts, shallow thoughts, and everything in between.

IF THE IDEA OF SEWING UP A SHABBY BOOK OF SCRAPS SEEMS CHALLENGING...DO NOT BE INTIMIDATED!!!  I teach 2nd grade craft monkeys (whose primary language is not English) on a regular basis.  I will take you by the hand and guide you through each step.  Like I tell my students:  everything seems difficult if you don't know how to do it.  I'll answer your questions and provide counsel to your most elementary questions.  

Got a little (or big) craft monkey at home?  If they can walk & talk, they can fill up their own little book while you work in yours.  If they're too little to use the sewing machine they can use a ready made composition book or notebook that you jazz up for them.  

REMAINS OF THE DAY will be using dry ingredients only.  No paint, misters, sprays, spraypaint, gesso, or vodka.  This will be qualitatively different than my regular visual journal process.  This is the type of journal I return to when I want to work fast and use up abandoned scraps.  Think of it as a visual DIARY on steroids.  A photo logbook of your ORDINARY days.  

NO Tuition refunds will be given once the password to the class blog is sent via email.