I don't remember saying these :)

But apparently these are my most famous quotations.....who knew I was such an expert on goats :D

Sarah Harris : Quotations

Drowned rat....

How do you like my new profile pic? lol

That's me, soaked to the skin at Legoland last weekend.

Dontcha just love the British summer? :D

Taking the scenic route....

....as Sir Timmy would say.

Here's my entry in Willow's tattoo CJ.

The theme of it is "a tattoo tour" - and basically the idea is similar to Ann's CJ that I did last month - it's a "show me all your tattoos" type thing - but the vibe is less scrapbooky and more artsy/collage.

So that meant that despite the similar theme it really did feel like doing something totally different. And it was mucho fun.

I know I say that about virtually everything :D But I really DO have so much fun making stuff - it's like being in pre-school again :)

I started this one off by cutting lots of relevant words and phrases from some old tattoo mags and sticking them onto some DCWV 'Far East' paper, more for the texture than the pattern as it was going to be fairly well covered up:



Then I toned it all down with some scraped on gesso, and added a wash of yellow, orange, red and purple acrylic paints:



The background was finished off by stamping with a GPP corrugated cardboard style stamp in brown chalk ink and edging with deep purple distress ink (I don't have a separate pic of that stage but you can see it clearly enough in the main photo above)


The lady is an image transfer of an inkjet print onto watercolour paper using Stewart Superior Transfer Ink (I love the soft quality of these transfers), coloured with watercolour pencils.

I cut stencils in a post it note for the crosses (which mark the locations of my five tattoos) and the dotted lines, and used chalk ink cats eyes DTP through the stencils to decorate her.

The road sign (Viva Las Vegas stamps) was stamped onto some Basic Grey spotty paper, watercoloured with brown dye ink and a waterbrush, and covered in crackle glaze.

The shrink plastic bird (Tim Holtz) is completely irrelevant but I had it lying around and thought it looked good :)



I printed pictures of my tattoos on transparency, cut them out using a stencil cutter (heat tool), and stained the edges with brown ink to make it look like they had been burnt. Each of these was tied onto the background using brown waxed thread.

To each of the pockets, I tied a tag which had been sprayed with orange and red glimmer mists, which explained a little about each tattoo.

I didn't go into huge detail though, as I figured that everyone who sees this will also have seen the layout I did in Ann's CJ, which has a little more info.

There is a swipe of titan buff paint behind each transparency just to make the tattoo pics clearer to view when the tags are out.



And the title "Take the Grand Tour" was cut in an art deco font on my Cricut (via SCAL software), painted with Aged Mahogany crackle paint, and then highlighted after drying with gold rub n buff to highlight the cracks.

And that's about it for that one. Can't wait to receive the next journal :)

I was supposed to be having an early night tonight....

... or failing that, working on a CJ....

but ITV4 have ALL the Chucky movies on and I had forgotten how funny they were!

Bride of Chucky has just finished (sob it made me miss my little Chucky and Tiffany dolls that used to sit either side of my PC - left behind in Coventry along with everything else during The Great Escape)

and Seed of Chucky has just started...

Ah, I love me a murderous dolly marathon :)

It's bigger on the inside.....

I did once swear off ATCs completely, as I kind of overdosed on the pesky little blighters a couple of years ago when they first became popular in the papercrafting community. But with my whole household suffering from incurable Doctor Who fever, as series four came to its epic finale, I just couldn't resist a Dr Who themed ATC swap that popped up on UKScrappers.

It was pure serendipity that on the day I signed up for the swap, I just happened to be clearing up the packaging for all of the toys and games that Connor received for his 6th birthday last month. He got tons of Doctor Who toys, as all his friends and family know he is Doctor crazy - and on every piece of packaging there was a great photo or two of the TARDIS. So before everything went in the recycling, out came the scissors, snip snip, and I had the focal images for my ATCs :)



I was toying with the phrase "it's bigger on the inside..." in my mind, and wondering how I could translate that into an ATC design - and then I remembered the page I did in Ann's tattoo CJ the other week, which had the semi circular flaps that opened up and out - and thought I could do something similar for the ATCs. I made a template for my Cricut by welding together four 3.5" x 2.5" ovals, and this folded up perfectly to ATC size:

Inside I decorated a separate panel with spacey stamps from Third Coast, using pearl and silver paint dabbers from Ranger, and pearlescent ice blue Brilliance ink, and then I sprayed over the lot with midnight blue glimmer mist. The TARDIS image (slightly different on every ATC as I had to work with what I could find on the toy packaging :)) was surrounded by a bit of sponged chalk ink in light blue, and some stardust stickles.

Around the central panel on the flap bits I stamped some ice blue stars and "Time and Relative Dimension in Space" in silver ink.


On the back (shown here both open and closed) I used my Third Coast "dematerialising man" stamp with silver paint.

These were fun to make, and I'm looking forward to receiving my swaps back.

Bad girls....burn in hell

I most certainly have been a bad girl - I've had this CJ for at leat three months, it might even be four! But hopefully not bad enough to suffer the fate of the "people under the stairs".

This is my final entry in the UKScrappers "take one stamp" CJ - and I'm going out with a bang as I think this is my favourite piece of them all.

This is my best friend Alison's journal. Shortly after launching this book into the world, she was taken seriously ill - and has been in hospital since February. I think this is the reason I have had such a mental block about working in the book - and why it has taken me so long. Looking at her work makes me so upset that she is stuck in hospital instead of stamping away merrily in her craft room - and I feel so helpless that I can't FIX her.

But I know that one thing that gives her a lift while she is holed up in there is seeing her CJs come home - so I just couldn't delay this book any longer....

And I hope I've done it justice.

The stamp we were given to work with was one of my buddy Michelle's Green Pepper Press beauties - the staircase from the Entrances plate:

As soon as I saw it, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it - a homage (or is it an homage? I never know...) to Wes Craven's classic 1991 comic horror movie, "The People Under The Stairs".

Alison's journal is an envelope book - so it was the perfect format for a "teaser and reveal" type piece.

This is the front of my envelope (note the little eyes in the dark under the staircase):



<---- close up of the dymo tape. HOW fab is that font? and look, it has a question mark too! If you are wondering how it was done, you need to be checking out the Around The Block website and ogling their "Ultimate Tape Writer Kit". It's so cooooool.


And this is the back - which adds nothing to the "story", I just thought the Queen and Co felt trim was purty :) (but it's BLOODY fiddly to use, it ended up stuck to itself, my fingers, the cat (well it would if I had a cat) - anything other than the blinking envelope!!!)



Inside the envelope is this insert:



The staircase as stamped wasn't as big as I needed it to be, so I stamped it twice and cut a couple of bits from the second copy to extend the stairs. Hopefully the join isn't too obvious. It's coloured in with watercolour pencils, and covered with Ranger crackle accents. The guys trapped under the stairs are a Stampotique stamp called "Three In A Round" - one of my favourites.



I'm really pleased with how the "wallpaper" turned out on the insert. This started out as plain white cardboard. I coloured it DTP with a mixture of Black Cherry Stazon and Cranberry Adirondack dye ink. Then I spritzed it generously over the top with red and purple glimmer mists. Once it had dried, I re spritzed it wih plain water, and then squished it in a damask patterned Cuttlebug embossing folder. I don't own a Cuttlebug, so I just rolled it with a rolling pin, and then sat it under a pile of books to dry, still in the folder. It works just as well, I think, here's a close up ----->

The back of the insert was far simpler, just a stamped quote from the movie, and some flames stippled through a stencil roughtly handcut from post it notes:



I hope none of the people yet to work on the CJ are intensely religious and easily offended :) Hopefully it's clear enough that I am quoting from a film, and haven't just gone frothing-at-the-mouth mad :)

I'm also hoping they don't sit on the CJ as long as I did, so that Alison will see it come home soon.....

sorry bessie!!!

Good morning sunshine

Well - it's pelting it down here, but a girl can dream of her sunny childhood Augusts....

This little triptych (or is it tryptich?) is my entry in this month's Art Raffle. So if you want to be in with a chance to win it - or any of the other lovely little artworks that are starting to pop up on other raffleers' blogs - come on over and sign up!

OK - I promise that's the last of the raffle commercials - to be honest it seems to be gaining momentum all on its own anyway - we already have almost 40 people on the list, and if even half of those send in an entry for August, the prize is going to be so fantastic.

(And I realised the other day that I won't ever be able to win it - gutted - because who is ever going to believe it isn't a fix if I pick my own number???!!!)

The triptych is made from frosted shrink plastic - stamped on the front in timber brown Stazon with one of my favourite ever stamps, an ancient home decor stamp from Rubber stampede. The back was coloured with chalks before shrinking, and the mica flakes were added to the front afterwards. Each piece was outlined after shrinking with a copper Krylon pen, and it's all joined together with copper jumprings.

I wonder who it will belong to by the first week in September?? Exciting :)

And now for something a little different...

Do you fancy doing something a little like a swap, that isn't a swap at all?

Something that requires very little effort and outlay, and with zero pressure to take part every month if life gets in the way - but with potentially very big rewards?

I sound scarily like a pyramid seller, but this is an art project not a get rich quick scheme, I promise! :)

Then follow your curiosity to the UK Art Raffle - and I hope you will want to play :)

(sorry to my pals overseas, but this one is a local swap for local people)

(and yes I know I said it isn't a swap - and it isn't - but swap rhymes with shop...and the joke wouldn't have worked without it :) )

Little Boxes gallery now complete

If you want to be blown away by some amazing miniature works of art - please feel free to check out the gallery for the recent Little Boxes swap I hosted....

Gallery this-a-way

It has taken me forever to get all the house pics loaded up, but they are all there now.

T-E-A-M Team!!!

I have managed to avoid the lure of High School Musical thus far - it helps that I have sons - but I heard the new single "Now or Never" just now on the radio and I love it to bits :)

Because it's about my Wildcats!!!!!!

OK, so technically, it's about their Wildcats, but as far as I'm concerned, it's Swindon's new theme tune :)

Just swap in the word 'puck' in place of 'ball', and it's perfect :D



Let's go team!

Gotta get it together
Yeah pull up and shoot! Score!
Are you ready?
Are you with me?
Team...Team...Team
Yeah!
Shake'em with the crossover (WILDCATS)
Tell me what we're here for
To win!
Cause we know we're the best team
Come on boys...come on boys...come on!
The way we play tonight
Is what we leave behind (that's right)
It all comes down to right now its up to us (LET'S GO)
So what are we gonna be (gonna be)
T-E-A-M TEAM!
Gotta work it out! turn it on! (come on!)

This is the last time to get it right
This is the last chance to make it our night (yea)
We gotta show what we're all about (TEAM!) (WILDCATS!)
Work together! (GO!)
This is the last chance to make our mark (SHOOT!)
History will know who we are
This is the last game so make it count it's
NOW OR NEVER!

W-I-L-D (Atta boy!) WILDCATS GET UP COME ON
W-I-L-D WILDCATS COME ON COME ON
West High Knights
Hey!
Yeah we're doing it right
Oh yea!
W(YEAH!)-I-L-D WILDCATS NOWS THE TIME

Gotta get an inside down low
End the pain, Now shoot! Score! (DEFENSE!)
Gotta work it together!
Gimme the ball...Gimme the ball...Gimme the ball! (FAST BREAK)
(Press play, Get the ball in control)
Let it fly from downtown (THREE MORE)
Show them we can do it better (NO WAY!)
GO! GO! GO!COME ON BOYS!(WILD CATS)

The way we play tonight (YEA!)
Is what we leave behind (thats right)
It all comes down to right (West High) now its up to us (LET'S GO)
So what are we gonna be (gonna be)
T-E-A-M TEAM!
Gotta work it out! turn it on! (COME ON!)

This is the last time to get it right (GO!)
This is the last chance to make it our night (YEA!)
We gotta show what we're all about (TEAM!) (WILDCATS!)
Work together! (GO!)
This is the last chance to make our mark (HOOPS)
History will know who we are (who we are)
This is the last game so make it count it's
NOW OR NEVER!

Troy: Right now I can hardly breathe
Gabriella: Oh, you can do it just know that I believe
Troy: And thats all I really need
Gabriella: Then come on!
Make me strong
Its time to turn it up
GAME ON!

WILDCATS GONNA TEAR IT UP
GO WILDCATS
YEA WE'RE NUMBER ONE
HEY WILDCATS WE'RE THE CHAMPIONS
GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO TEAM GO!

West High Knights
Hey!
Yea we're putting up a fight
WILDCATS!
We never quit it! What? Gonna win it! What?
Let me hear you say
HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY!

This is the last time to get it (oh!) right
This is the last chance to make it all (yea!) happen
We got to show them what we're all about (TEAM!) (WILDCATS)
WORK TOGETHER! (Troy!)
This is the last chance to make our mark
History will know who we are (who we are)
This is the last game so make it count it's
NOW OR NEVER
YEAH!

Look - I've gone all cutesy :)

This card isn't exactly my usual style, but I really enjoyed making it and I like how it has turned out.

The sweet little anime-style couple are a new stamp from Dewdrop Craftz - the stamp isn't actually released until Friday, but I was lucky enough to get hold of an early copy after asking very nicely, as I needed it for a wedding this Saturday.

The wedding is likely to be a little unconventional - as the couple are kind of gothy/punky/alternative, and many of the guests will be also.... so I decided to veer off the standard cream and white wedding colour scheme for this card.

A quick how-to:

I used an A6 Artoz card blank in pearlescent midnight blue, and cut it into a gothic arch shape.
Across the middle is a strip of decorative vellum with a silver damask pattern, edged with a silver krylon pen and stickified with my Xyron.
The rest of the card was stamped with Autumn Leaves flourish stamps in silver ink (chosen because they matched the design on the stickers so well), and then the whole thing was edged with the Krylon pen.
I also ran a length of dark blue satin ribbon across the vellum strip.

The dark blue velvet stickers at top and bottom were a gift from a friend at work who is a cardmaker - she thought they might work with my gothy wedding card, and she was right - thanks Shona!

The happy couple themselves were stamped in black versafine on plain white card, coloured in with lyra aquacolour crayons and a waterbrush, accented with purple stickles (his tie pin, her necklace), and then cut out with a slight border once dry. then I clear embossed the whole piece, and edged it with the silver krylon pen.

So, that's the card done.....now I just have to work out what on earth I'm going to WEAR!

Meet Markus

My new motor, isn't he purty?

Why Markus? Well, he's a nifty mover, and can turn on a penny.....

Pity it's not a Swedish car, that would have made more sense, but the Canucks haven't had many (make that any, ever) players from the home of Vauxhall, and besides I just wanted to honour our departing captain somehow - we never really got to say goodbye to him properly - and so he gets a little silver Corsa named after him whether it makes sense or not :) :)

It appears to be silly o' clock

But I kind of got on a roll with this CJ entry and wanted to finish it (I'll be shattered at work tomorrow, but).

This is my entry in Ann's tattoo CJ. Her theme is "tell me a story" - the idea being we explain the meanings behind our tattoos.

It's very much not my usual inky, painty, arty farty style - I even used patterned papers instead of making my own, which is unusal for me nowadays - in fact it's decidedly scrapbooky - but I really really like it :)

The cool thing about this particular CJ is that it's designed to hang up vertically - so a 2-page spread has a top and a bottom, not a right and a left. That makes an interesting change.

On the top page I had an awful lot of info to fit into a 6x6 page, so I did a bit of paper engineering to give me a bigger canvas. I like how it looks shut, and open it gave me plenty of room to explain the ins and outs of my 4 old tattoos (if you want to read, you'll need to click):



On the bottom page, which was all about my new backpiece, I HAD to use the beautiful orca stamp that Michelle carved for me. This is the best stamp I own without a shadow of a doubt.

Looks great doesn't it!

Behind the orca I put some cream vellum just to tone down the colours of the backpiece photo, as the bright reds and blues don't really go with the olive/currant papers I used.

That's the same reason I changed the colours of the Canucks logo, I hope they won't sue me for using the wrong Pantone :)

Here's the bottom page open:



I really enjoyed working in this book. It's always fun to do something a little different.

My last entry for the UKStampers 'Take One Stamp' CJ

(at least unless Petra's missing CJ ever turns up - which I really hope it does one day)

This is my entry for 3DJean's book - we had lovely giant chipboard tags to work on for this one, which is great because they can hold up heavy stuff like the thick texture paste background I put together for my page.

The stamp we were given was a fabulous pair of Zetti legs:

Cool aren't they.

My first attempt at this page was to make a Chinese dragon, with numerous pairs of stripey legs. It would have looked great if I could have got it to work :)

Having abandoned the dragon idea, I went for a puppet, as I figured that way I could cut the legs up and present them in a slightly different position to how they come out when stamped, as that would add a little variety to the book.

A quick how-to.

First I stamped and cut out a draft copy of the legs, and arranged them on the chipboard tag how I wanted them - I also sketched in her upper body. (copied from a picture I found on the net of a marionette, as I can only draw when I'm copying...)

Then I layered on a thick helping of texture paste all around where the puppet was due to end up, and etched swirls into the wet paste with the end of a paintbrush.


Once dry I sponged the paste randomly with Ranger pearlescent acrylic paints (cranberry, wild plum and raisin), and sprayed some dark purple and dark blue glimmer mist on for good measure. And when all that was dry I rubbed a very small amount of gold rub n buff over the top to highlight all the texture (a little of that stuff goes a very very long way)

Her legs were embossed in gold and coloured in with pink and orange glimmer mists (with a paintbrush rather than sprayed).

And her body was sketched onto plain white paper and painted over using various acrylic paints.

Button brads and a little bit of netting at her collar were her finishing touches, and then I glued her down in the valleys previously left without texture paste.

Some gold embroidery thread and lilac dymo tape finished the page.

This book has one more stop before it goes home to Jean, but that's a secret ;)

a new baby and a new tattoo

Don't panic - the baby isn't mine!

Huge congrats to Anam and Ian on the birth last night of their lovely baby girl - I woke this morning to a text with the happy news - and am so pleased for them all.

She has a beautiful name, but I will leave that up to Anam to reveal :)

And as for MY new baby :) My backpiece is now finished (and sore! lol)

It took a total of just under 9 hours over two sittings, and yesterday's sitting was way more painful than the first, no idea why.

But it was so worth it, Mike has done a great job and I love it!

The colours in the photo are a bit off - the waves are actually quite a bit darker, but you get the idea.

Blimey, is it the end of term already?

There's another school year gone. My baby is growing up so fast!!!

And bless him he didn't seem at all phased by the fact I insisted he go into the garden to have his photo taken with a blank piece of paper :)

Just standard random behaviour around these parts.

I didn't get my act together to make beautifully handcrafted gifts for the teachers this year - they've got nice smellies from Boots - but the card at least will ensure they don't forget Connor in a hurry. It's very "him", right down to the grubby fingernails :)

Little Boxes on the Hillside - literally :)

Ever had great fun taking part in a swap, and then got to the end of it, looked at all the lovely little pieces of art you have been sent, and then thought "now what do I do with all these??"

I did :)

So I made this.

It doesn't fit anywhere near all of my new houses on it, because as the swap hostess I am lucky enough to have a full set of 55. That is despite it being huge (my foot wasn't in there deliberately but I have left it in for scale). But I have set it up so that the houses are interchangeable (all stuck on with velcro) - so they will all see duty on the hillside at some point.

Before the velcro went on:



It's just a cheapo box canvas coloured with acrylic washes - took no time at all, but I really like how it looks with it's little town in place.

Squeeeee - I just got the BEST pressie!!!!

Thank you Anam!!!!!! :) :) :) :)

New look for my beloved Swindon Wildcats....

.... please don't sue the team, Mr Disney!!!

Separated at birth....

New Swindon logo:


Disney's High School Musical Wildcats logo:


eeek!!!

(I like the red, though....)

(thanks to eagle eyed Tracey who spotted the likeness, clearly a closet HSM watcher! :) )

Picket fences

It's been so long since I blogged anything creative that I've forgotten what I usually write...

ummm... these are for a swap, and I had a ton of fun making them....

The fences are made from wooden coffee stirrers from Maccy D's - they are narrower than lolly sticks, so better suited to the scale of this project.

The first one was Alison's idea (I was staring blankly at the three plain fences I had made and had no idea where to start, so I fired her a text - "pearly gates", she said - "brilliant!" I said :))

So I cut the fence posts down at the sides to resemble gates, collaged away with religious texts and a doyley, sprayed it to death with pearl Glimmer Mist, added a padlock with white wire, a rather dour looking angel with vellum wings, and one of my favourite quotes, and bob's your uncle :) Not really my usual style at all, but I like it.

One down, 2 to go....



The next one is more my usual kind of thing - purples and reds and a Stampotique goth girlie.

The fence for this one was primed with black gesso, and then overpainted with red and violet interference paints, stamped with watermelon pigment ink and then oversprayed with pearl Glimmer Mist (seeing as it was still out from the last one :))

The girl was coloured with watercolour pencils and a waterbrush, and her hair is made from thin black wire.

The angry cat and cobwebs (made from a cool snippet of fabric sent to me last month as a swap host gift by the lovely Audrey Hernandez) finish this one off nicely.

Last one:



Number three was just plain fun to make, although it has a sad story:

My poor little alien has crash landed, and as he sits amongst the rusty wreckage of his ship, all he can do is sit on a battered old farm fence and look folornly at the skies :( I'm sure he'll be rescued soon though.

The fence was stamped with musical notes (for his sad, homesick songs, sob), and then randomly overpainted with red-oxide acrylic paint and antique linen crackle paint. After the paint had cracked I went back over it all with a light coat of aged mahogany distress ink.

My alien pal was coloured with watercolour pencils and perched on top of the fence (I removed one post to make him more comfortable). His ship wreckage is made from a cool bit of rusty metal I found in the street (packrat, me???). And the little sign is just card and string, hung onto the fence with a small brad.

Oh... My... God!!! :) This ain't a town it's a city....

Ever wanted to know what roughly 1,200 little cardboard (mainly) houses look like???

They look like that :) (click on the pic for a better view)

That is (most of - I'm still waiting on 2 or 3 sets) the output from my recent Little Boxes swap.

I have a fairly large living room - approx 24 foot by 12 foot - and that is it completely covered.

I couldn't fit them all into one photo - hence the rather odd looking pic - I took 3 and merged them together in Photoshop (thanks again to Darby for the lend of his PC :))

Insane isn't it??? lol

Darbs and I were up till around 3am this morning sorting them all out into envelopes to be sent to the swapees.

I'd say we were about two thirds of the way done when we gave up.

More envelope stuffing tonight for me tonight then!

It'll all be worth the effort though when people start to receive their swaps :)

Blog holiday

hi peeps

I have come back from Disneyland Paris to find my PC at home has died - and I won't be able to blog from work (not that I'm ever supposed to :) ) because we are crazy busy

So I won't be blogging for a while - but I'm still alive :) and yes we had a fab time at Disney!