Cold Blooded Journals with Michael DeMeng

July 9, 2011, my friend, Evelyn, and I travelled to Solvang to attend this workshop. We had so much fun on the roadtrip, as well as touring Solvang, shopping, and eating! All I can say is: If you ever get the chance to take one of MDM's classes DO IT!!! Michael is the most unpretentious guy and one helluva instructor!! He thoroughly (and patiently) walked us through all the steps needed to create our little monsters including a safety and info demo on the power drill vs the Dremel. Chroma crackle usually takes a few days to achieve the "crackle" affect, but Michael showed us his technique for obtaining instant crackle with the product. It was amazing!!

My journal cover started out looking like a lava-fest - it was RED! I just wasn't happy with it, so upon returning to our room for the evening I worked and worked on it and came up with the final version above. I'm now very happy with the results. I learned so much about how to put this thing together and will incorporate all my boo-boos into my next effort. Since I'd never done anything quite like this, I learned one needs to think ahead about how all the pieces will be attached and some logical order into doing so.

Michael had several of his assemblage pieces and sketches for sale so of course I had to buy a little pencil sketch. Lucky me - I also "donated" a baby doll head for a demo, so I came away with it painted by MDM!!! NO! I didn't ask him to sign it, even though someone suggested I do so, I felt like it would be kinda "stalker-ish".

At the end of the day we all took our journals upstairs to the wine bar next door for a show-and-tell. Complimentary wine and goodies awaited us and after everyone was comfy Michael did a review on ALL of our journals. He asked if we wanted to say anything about our work and then he pointed out several things that worked in our piece. He had wonderful things to say about each and every journal (I think there were about 21 or so of us in the class!) It was very nice to have feedback and to be able to hear everyone talk about what they did or why.

It was a great weekend and we're looking forward to attending MDM's La Maison Fantome class in New Orleans at the end of Jan/first of Feb. I've never been to NOLA, so it's going to be very exciting. We have 3 days of class with a couple of days in between of tours. I hear a seance is in the works at one of the haunted hotels. Can't wait!!