Hey everyone!  I will be participating in the Long Beach and the Santa Ana Patchwork Holiday Shows.   The Long Beach event will be this next weekend, Sunday Nov. 6th, from 11-5:00. 

The Santa Ana show will be on Nov. 27th, 11-5:00

Info. for the Patchwork Holiday Shows can be found at this link:  http://www.patchworkshow.com/

Hope to see you there!

This last weekend I went to the SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators) convention in Los Angeles.  At this event there where keynote speakers (Bruce Coville, Jerry Pinkney, Libba Bray, David Small, Judy Blume, Jon Scieszka, Norton Juster, and many more), parties, socials and competitions.

I arrived knowing that I would have my crew from my critique group beside me. ( Charles Eubank, Ella German, Patti Gabrielson, Wendy Kitts, Richard Metzger, Katrin Azimi, and Anna Guillotte).  Soon I was able to add to my crew a whole bunch of new faces. EVERYONE was intensely friendly and supportive.  

I went to several workshops and I entered my portfolio into the portfolio showcase.   On Saturday evening I found out that I had been chosen for the Mentorship award.  Also winning the Mentorship award where Eliza Wheeler, Juliana Brion, Juana Martinez, and Christina Forshay.  Hooray for us!

That night we had a Pajama Party by the pool.  There where a lot of artist, writers, school teachers and librarians that got their freak on.  It was a bit disturbing.

The next day the Mentor-ship winners received personal critiquing from industry professionals, E.B. Lewis, David Diaz, Priscilla Burris, Cecilia Yung, and Pat Cummings.  That night we shared a group discussion.

So now I am very tired.  I have canceled everything that I wanted to do today except to toot my own horn because that seemed very important to me.

SCBWI Award Winners: http://scbwiconference.blogspot.com/2011/08/portfolio-showcase-winners.html

Got Story Count Down:  (my teacher Joy Chu’s Childrens Book blog) http://gotstorycountdown.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/awestruck-by-teaching-part-1/

SPECIAL THANKS -  Lori Mitchell (teacher, illustrator and writer) for saying that I should be a children’s book illustrator and turned me on to SCBWI, David Diaz (award winning illustrator)  who critiqued me and said that I could make it in illustration, Joy Chu ( art director and designer of over 20 children’s books)  for teaching me how to be a children’s book illustrator,  and my critique group for keeping me in line.

LINK to my New Illustration blog:  http://www.zuill.us/illustration/

Growing up, like in most families, special times called for special cakes.

Unfortunately, a special cake for us was a store bought sheet cake.  Usually the cake part was not too bad.  But, the frosting was made out of some wierd sweet cement.

On family trips to the coast we would often pass a place called the Madonna Inn. As a child it was the most beautiful building I had ever seen. It was an all wood building painted white with sugary sweet pink trim. On one of these trips we actually stopped at the Inn.

 Let me stop now to go into a little detail about the Madonna Inn. It is legendary in California. It’s probably one of the number one places to stay on a honeymoon. Besides the grandeur of their buildings exterior, what the Madonna Inn is primarily known for is the fearless interior decor. Unlike most lodging establishments that play it safe with their decor, I believe the owners of the Madonna said, “Screw it, lets just go for it!”, and proceeded to decorate the hell out of the inns  interior.

 Please check out the Madonna Inn for yourselves: http://www.madonnainn.com/

 Here you can check out the outrageous decor of each of the Madonna Inns rooms: http://www.madonnainn.com/features.php – My favorite room is #206, the Old Mill room.

 The Madonna Inn is also known for its cakes. When my family entered the Inn’s bakery I beheld the most beautiful, huge cakes I had ever seen. I told my folks right then and there that I wanted a chocolate cake. At the time all they had was Black Forest Cake. I had never had that type of cake before. It sounded suspicious. But it was beautiful. Besides its large size it was covered with chocolate shavings. Much to my horror my folks only bought a slice, which I couldn’t believe they did, because obviously with anything so frickin’ fantastic you MUST buy the whole thing. To my parents credit a single slice would be enough for 6 people being that its size was about half my height.

Like I said, that cake was beautiful. When a slice was removed from the whole cake you could see the three types of frosting/filling in between each layer. One of the fillings was some red stuff that looked like jelly. I had never seen that before. Once again I was suspicious. 

When we got to our final destination it was time to try the cake. (TRUTH TIME: While driving I found that the cake was close enough to me and the wrapper loose enough for me to sneak some of the chocolate shavings off of the cake). I have no idea how we went about cutting into this hunk of cake. But what I do remember is the richest, creamiest frosting I had ever tasted. I mean, you could have just eaten the frosting all by itself. The cake itself was perfection. It was moist and rich. And the filling (chocolate crème, butter crème, and the red jelly stuff) added new dimension to a cake that I never knew existed. 

Since that time I have tried other Black Forest Cakes, but none seem as good the one we got from the Madonna Inn.  I don’t know if it’s because nobody makes  Black Forest Cake as well as Madonna Inn or over that the years my memory has turned that Black Forest Cake into a legend.

Laughing Owl by Andrea Zuill

Hi everyone,  I will be at the Palm Springs Desert Art Festival this coming weekend.  That’s the whole weekend, both Saturday and Sunday.

Here is the location:

Frances Stevens Park, 538 N. Palm Canyon Drive
Palm Springs, CA 92262

This festival is FREE to get into. 

Hope to see you there!

The Pink Parlour Festival

 It’s Time!  Yes, The Pink Parlour Festival is this Sunday.

WHEN:  Sunday March 27th, 2011

TIME:  11am to 7pm

LOCATION:  The Santa Anita Race Park, located in Arcadia, California,  285 W Huntington Drive Arcadia, CA 91007.

INFO:    http://www.thepinkparlourfestival.com/

 The racetrack property is bounded by Baldwin Avenue and Huntington Drive and is adjacent to the Westfield Santa Anita Fashion Park. Major freeways with access to Santa Anita are the Foothill Freeway (I-210) to the north, San Bernardino Freeway (I-10) to the south, the San Gabriel River Freeway (I-605) to the east and the Pasadena (110) and Glendale (2) Freeways on the west. Entrances are on Baldwin Avenue or Huntington Drive.

Pink By Andrea Zuill

Sunday March 27th, 2011

I will be participating the Pink Parlour Festival!

WHEN:  Sunday March 27th, 2011

TIME:  11am to 7pm

LOCATION:  The Santa Anita Race Park, located in Arcadia, California,  285 W Huntington Drive Arcadia, CA 91007.

INFO:    http://www.thepinkparlourfestival.com/

 The racetrack property is bounded by Baldwin Avenue and Huntington Drive and is adjacent to the Westfield Santa Anita Fashion Park. Major freeways with access to Santa Anita are the Foothill Freeway (I-210) to the north, San Bernardino Freeway (I-10) to the south, the San Gabriel River Freeway (I-605) to the east and the Pasadena (110) and Glendale (2) Freeways on the west. Entrances are on Baldwin Avenue or Huntington Drive.

Entrance to the Museum

 For me, Salvation Mountain is in two parts.  There is the “mountain”  and then there is the museum.    The Museum is currently unfinished.

The Hogan

 To the left of the  museum entrance is the hogan.  Like the rest of the mountain the inside of the hogan is decorated with house paint designs and bible verses.  Also, there are several trophies.  The trophies are for Leonard’s cars.  They have been entered into art car shows.

Another room.

 Next to the hogan is another room.  It’s much more visually quiet.  It feels very ancient. 

Another view of the museum.

 This is another shot of the exterior of the museum.  I liked all the little windows.

The museum.

 Inside the museum is this old recliner.  It looks like the one in my living room.

Tunnel inside the museum area.

 Leonard calls these pillars “trees”.  They support the ceiling or what there is of it.

The museum will have a domed ceiling when finished.

American Folk Art Plaque.

 The Folk Art Society of American has made Salvation Mountain a National Folk Art Site.

Paul Bunyan & Babe at the Trees of Mystery

 When I was little I was a sucker for roadside attractions.  No matter how much I begged my parents they never let me see  The Thing or the Giant Ball of Yarn.  My parents didn’t want to get “tricked” into seeing something, well, silly.   But now I am a adult.  I can do whatever I want to do.  And of course the first on my list of forbidden fun was to see a roadside attraction.

I wasn’t expecting these roadsides attractions to be equal to the Smithsonian or Wild Animal Park, but I feel that they have a kind of naive charm.  They represent a simpler time in America and demonstrate the ability to make something out of nothing.

First I saw The Thing in Arizona.  And no, I will not tell you what the thing is.  This last summer my daughter and I got to see the Trees of Mystery in Klamath, CA.  At first you might think this attraction is nothing more than someone buying some property that has trees on it and adding botanical stories and descriptive signs for each tree.  Well, yah it is, but it is a bit more than that.  My family is into kitsch so just seeing Paul Bunyan and Babe was pretty awesome.  Two things you probably didn’t know about this Paul Bunyan is the black shirt-ish thing under his red shirt is not a fuzzy camisole but his chest hair.  Very sexy.  Second, Paul actually talks to the tourist.  I believe you can shout out questions which he’ll answer.  I saw a small boy searching for something on Babe’s underbelly. At that time Paul asked the boy, “What’cha lookin’for?”.  The embarrassed boy ran out and away from Babe. I can’t blame the kid, I was kind of curious what was under there  too. 

Little trees growing on a big tree

 Like I stated before, the most interesting trees have information about them.  Like the tree above, it has little trees growing on it’s limbs.

Signs

There are a bunch of little signs everywhere that where plainly not like the rest of the signs.  My Daughter and I thought maybe they marked graves.  Cool!  But no,  these signs mark weddings that have taken place at the Trees of Mystery.  That’s cool too, but graves would have been much for fun.  I should have known that they where not grave markers by the shear quantity.  I guess I thought a massacre had happen there a long time ago in the days of the wild west.  It was just wishful thinking.   

The tram

 They have a tram there that takes you on a ride up though the trees to a mountain top.

Regret inside the tram

 See the photo of my Daughter?  That is a real live reaction to being enclose in a small, transparent tram car.   All bets where that I would get scared because I tend to get scared rather easily.  But nope, I had no problems.  I’m not quite sure what freaked my Daughter out but  she lived.

View from Top

 Nice mountain top view.

Chainsaw Carving

 On the next part of the tour you get to view a ton of chainsaw sculptures.

Chainsaw sculpture

 I thought this squirrel was cute.

Indian baskets

 Lastly when you arrive at the end of the tour you’ll see a gift shop and a Native American Museum.  I loved the museum because I love Indian art. So please, if you visit the Trees of Mystery check out the museum.  Native Americans are the original American crafters.

On California’s Northern coast there is a fairytale town.

Each building looks like a cobbler or a candy maker should be hard at work inside.

Actually, there was a candy maker hard at work inside this building.  He was making fudge.

I mean they REALLY went out of their way to fairtale the place up.

Even their advertising was precious.  Humm, let me guess, I bet they sell  blue and white porcelain.

When does a town decide that they should be adorable?   And, when does a town decides that adorable for them is fairytale houses?

Then, as if  to say their town went too far into cute,  they elect Dirty Harry as their mayor.

It’s all a fine balance Carmel.

My Booth.

 What a busy weekend.  I did my first craft shows!  The first show was on Saturday and it was the Red Rabbit Art and Craft Show in Glendale, CA   It was so much fun!  Everyone was very nice.  No evil to be found anywhere.   I  had sold so much work that when I got home that evening  I had to print up more images for the next show on the next day!

My Booth.

 So you know how I made a big stink about craft shows and how there booths looked all a like?  Well, I took the plain (some might say boring) route, with my booth.  I’ve got the bare bones of a booth, so now I can start decorating it with personal touches. 

I spent money too.  I bought some strawberry jam and pickled apples from Coldwater Canyon Provisions (their Etsy store is new so there isn’t much listed right now), some soap from Max’s Apothecary, and something from Sweet Little Things  (but I can’t say what it is because it’s a gift for my daughter so she shouldn’t go looking at their site.) .

I learned a lot.

I almost forgot,  the organizer arranged for a Vietnamese food  truck to come by so we could get lunch.  It was every tasty.

Oh, and one more thing,  I would like to thank my blog readers that showed up at the show!  That was sooooo cool!  It made me very happy.  I think my head swelled up so much with pride that  by the end of the day I had trouble getting into my car.  But a little motor oil made the wedging much easier.