received my Coraline box!

You know how every time you see a box on the doorstep you have that instant where you think in the back of your mind that maybe, just this once, it’s not going to be something like new filters for the vacuum cleaner or a car part or whatever, but instead a mysterious present from a stranger? Well…

fig. 1--mysterious box from a stranger arrives.

Ta-da!

Here it is, Box no. 34 in the Coraline Mystery Box Swap (just to clarify, this was a swap of handmade boxes inspired by the ones the makers of the Coraline movie sent out to various lucky bloggers–these aren’t “official” Coraline boxes). Thanks so much to my little mochi for organizing this, it was such fun to participate, and thanks to Carmen of Carmenland for making this amazingly cool box.

It was *so* much fun going through all the lovely little bits and bobs Carmen made… So here are a bunch of pictures of everything so other people can enjoy all this neat stuff too (I struggled mightily to take decent photos for once, to do the box justice!).

fig. 2--mysteries revealed

fig. 3--beautiful mittens!

fig. 4--delightful notecards, with mice, buttons, and jaunty black cats

fig. 5--a seeing stone, a ghost child's eye, and a kit for buttoning one's eyes

Stuff for Coraline box swap (in progress)

Just thought I’d post some photos of what I’ve done so far for the Coraline mystery box swap that my little mochi organized. I just got my cigar box today, and it’s so much cooler than the photos on eBay made it look! I was really nervous after I ordered it that it was not right for this project, but as soon as I saw it in real life I totally fell in love with it.

So now that I’ve built up the suspense, here’s the box (my photos don’t do it justice either–the colors are richer in real life):

Isn’t it great? Douglas Fairbanks! *squee* It’s going to look so good with red velvet inside…I still need to hit some thrift stores and find some red velvet, of course–this week sometime.

I’m planning on doing at least one little sculpture for it, maybe two if I have time. Here is the first one in progress (please excuse the horrible photos…I don’t know why I always take such awful blurry pictures. Anyway…). Here’s my little tortoise, all sad and shell-less and nuuuude:

And his shell, the top half, anyway:

Ugh, those are blurrier than I thought! >_<

They’re the only ones I have, though! Anyway… Let’s just move on and pretend we didn’t see those horrible blurry things, shall we? :)

Here’s a really rough sketch for a pen and ink drawing I’m planning — I don’t know how much it’ll look like this in the end… I have some plans for adding some little 3-d touches (kind of pop-up book style), so this is just kind of a concept drawing.

So that’s the news for today–back to schoolwork, I guess. I’m coming to realize that I’m going to have to tag every single post I make with “things I do instead of schoolwork”. Sigh.

Coraline box swap–I’m in!

Yay!! I’m so excited about it…I’ve already got stuff planned and sketches going. I just need to find a box & some red velvet, but I have everything else I’ll need. That’s what I’ll be working on for the next few weeks because it has to get in the mail on March 16th and that timeline is making me just a wee bit nervous…

Oh, and and and–yay again–I saw Coraline for the second time last night! It’s so amazing…well, words fail me. Everyone just has to go see it for themselves. I was just as enthralled the second time around (except for when I was distracted by the persistent smell of neem oil [which smells kind of like weird, not-so-yummy Chinese food] which was squidging its way through the theatre. Maybe someone actually brought Chinese takeout in with them?? That would be an impressive new level of movie-theatre-food-smuggling dedication).

Coraline box swap

I was looking around some more at the Coraline movie website and came across Bobinsky’s blog, which I hadn’t read before (really funny!). Anyway, it looks like I’m not the only one still wishing I’d gotten a Coraline box…(Even Bobinsky wishes he had–poor guy, you’d think he’d have been a sure thing!)

Some bloggers are organizing their own Coraline box swap (that’s a really wonderful crafts blog that link goes to–my little mochi, it’s called–look around at all her neat teeny dollies and stuff), and I keep wondering if I should sign up for it. I reeeally want to, I’m just nervous about it. I wouldn’t want to disappoint anyone! Still……

I think I will. Or try to, anyway–only the first fifty people to sign up tomorrow get to do it, so even if I try I might not get in. But I think I’ll give it a shot. Eek, I’m scared! (but now that I’ve decided to try you just know I won’t get in, heh…)

Oh, and look, here’s my kitty with button eyes (scary!):

You can make your own button-eyed picture at coraline.com–go to the Other Mother’s Workshop!

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interview with Henry Selick

Just wanted to post a link to an interesting interview with the director of Coraline (you remember, I was raving about his cool movies in an  earlier entry), Henry Selick… very fun read!

I love this part where he’s talking about what he loves about stop-motion–this is exactly what’s so magical about it:

“Stop-motion is what I keep coming back to, because it has a primal nature. It can never be perfect. There’s always something like—[Points to the Coraline puppet on the table.] Coraline’s sweater, you can notice here that it’s sort of boiling. And that’s because people are touching it and moving it for every frame. There’s an undeniable reality that I don’t think any of the other mediums give you. You know these things are real even if you don’t know exactly how they move, how big they are. [. . . ] It’s never going to be the dominant filmmaking style. It’s always going to be the cousin off to the side. You know, the more eccentric relative of yours that some of the kids like.”

Henry Selick talks to the AV Club

oog, major unreasonable fit of envy

I’ve just been looking around at all the mysterious boxes various super-special bloggers have been getting from the people making the Coraline movie and I am so excessively green with envy right now, I can’t even tell you! And then Billy insists on being all reasonable and junk, telling me things like “Well, since you’ve only been blogging for like two months and plus you don’t let anyone see your blog and plus you rarely write anything of consequence or interest to anyone, you couldn’t possibly have gotten one so how can you be jealous of something that you couldn’t expect to get?” which of course is just so irritating. Has anyone ever liked the voice of reason, ever? I doubt it.

Anyway, these boxes are so amazing! All handmade, and each one different & full of these wonderful little artifacts from the movie. I can’t do them justice; I’ll just post some of the pics I’ve found:

Here’s Fashionista Piranha’s:

Here’s the one Cleolinda got (love Cleolinda–I’m dying for her to finish her book The Black Ribbon):

Here is the one Geeks of Doom got:

Apparently each box came with a password for the movie website (www.coraline.com) to unlock some footage, too..(passwords so far are “stopmotion,” “buttoneyes,” “armpithair,” “sweaterxxs,” “puppetlove,” and “moustachio”). This is just the coolest promotion idea I’ve ever heard of. And the movie is another stop-motion one from Henry Selick, who directed Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach (squee! I just love both of those movies so much. Stop-motion is my favorite kind of animation…so much detail and richness in the settings and characters and everything, there’s nothing else like it). And I loved the book so much, and now the movie looks like it will be just *incredible*…yay for things to look forward to as school does its best to beat all the joy out of me, haha.