If there’s one thing you need to know about me is that I love to make things. In the past year, art and crafts has become a mode of therapy of sorts for me. I’m always searching different lifestyle or scrapbooking blogs for what’s new or what other people are doing that is sort of scrapbooking, but just a different take on it. I personally don’t really scrapbook the traditional 12×12 layouts and such. It’s not my style. I’ve so far experimented with Smashbooks, art journals, and Project Life. They were all fun, but I’m still not sure which style of journaling I’m comfortable with. But there are some amazingly creative people out there in the world and I’m perfectly content with trying different styles to see what I like, what I don’t like and take all those different pieces of style to create my own.
My search brought me to Mary Ann Moss. She’s the lovely woman behind Dispatch From LA and this AMAZING CLASS Remains of the Day. Mary Ann uses scraps of fabric and paper to construct these amazing one-of-a-kind journals. I’d been eyeballing this class for a really long time. I would have taken the class much sooner if I had a sewing machine. Alas, I didn’t have one and I really couldn’t afford to buy one just for this one class. But, my very good friend John lent me his and so I purchased the class and spent a week making my first journal!
I would like to mention now that this class is worth every penny spent. Mary Ann provides a three-part pdf that goes step by step on how to make these journals. Each part is accompanied by a series of instructional videos, where she demonstrates the steps she outlined in the pdf. There are about 29 videos to watch in total. It’s very generous and there’s a lot of little tidbit things that she shows us to make, like small envelope pockets and windows. Her instructions are very clear and concise and you’ll have enough material to keep you busy for weeks. It’s a go-at-your-own-pace sort of class, so you can download the pdfs and visit the class site to watch the videos at your leisure.
I ended up making so many pages on my first go that I used half of it for my greek-styled journal and saved the other half for another journal. Here’s a small video of my greek Remains of the Day journal. Enjoy.