it's Art Raffle time again

and like the girly swot I am, I have finished my September entry already.

I've got this done SO quick, that you would ALMOST think I knew the theme ahead of time!

This month our theme is Take Flight - and if you would like to take part, please hop on over to the website and sign up - you have just under four weeks to get your piece made and sent in.

Last month's theme of Summer Sun prompted an impressive turn out of 30 entries, and all the artwork submitted was A-MAZ-ING!!!

The prize was sent to the mystery winner today - and as soon as he/she lets me know that it has arrived, I will lift the curtain on the August gallery over at the Art Raffle website, so that you can see for yourselves the amazing range of entries. I was genuinely blown away by the amount of talent there is out there.

Here's a little teaser:


Even all blurred up it looks like something you'd love to win, huh?

In a nice purty box like this?:


Well then, you'd better take part this month then :)

You got to be in it to win it!

Anyway - where was I? Ah yes - my September entry :)

This is a sun catcher type thingy - made from UTEE mixed with flex, coloured with alcohol inks, and encasing a stamped image (Tim Holtz) on clear shrink plastic.

The basic technique is the same as how I made this pendant - the only difference being I drilled the holes after the piece was set, with a little Dremel type drill - rather than using the straw.

I hung it onto some hemp string and added some copper beads.

Please ignore my dirty windows in the photos :D

Good luck to all of you who enter the raffle this month.

Happy birthday Bull!

Ryan Kesler, sweet 24 today :)



















and as if he wanted to give ME a birthday gift....follow the link for his first interview for the 2008/9 season. It's good to hear that he is, as ever, raring to go:

Kesler Arrives

I can't WAIT for the season to start!!!!!!

17 days until I get to see my Wildcats back out there. And almost 6 weeks until the Canucks are back in regular season action.

I WANT MY HOCKEYYYYYYYY!!!!

Number cruncher

I am so on a roll with these A-Z journal pages now, I'll be caught up in no time!

The trick seems to be not horrendously overcomplicating them - this was another nice, quick page.

This page - N for Numbers - celebrates my love of maths back in my school and Uni days - it was such a rush to solve a particularly troublesome equation - ahhhhh, sweet memories :)

It also touches on the fact that I am lucky enough to have carried my love of maths into my career as a statistician.

And it's no shock that I have ended up falling in love with hockey, the statistic obsessed sport :)



A quick how to.

I printed some graph paper from the internet, and aged it a little with old paper and antique linen distress inks.

The background is a Paper Artsy numbers collage, masked a little to ensure no overlaps.

The tags were dampened and crumpled and dyed with peeled paint and frayed burlap distress inks.

Each tag was topped with a little torn piece of sandpaper and a piece of 7 Gypsies number gaffer tape - and the appropriate number of small button brads.

Finally, I thought for once I would surround my journalling with the ubiquitous curly brackets - because on this page, they actually make sense :) They were cut freehand from black card.

th-th-th-that's all folks.

Until the letter O.

I got the music in me

And it's yet another A-Z journal page - that's 3 in 2 days!

And I am now officially 50% of the way through my book. Yay :)

This was a quick and easy one - all I can manage on a work night really.

I printed the band / crowd silhouette onto some textured card, sealed it with acrylic spray, and then went over it with a Versamarker pen and embossed with one layer of UTEE (because I like the bumpiness)

Then I sponged various colours of bright dye inks (Kaleidacolor, Adirondack and Stampin Up) into the "air" above the band, and using post it notes as a mask, I made spotlight beams with white pigment ink applied with cut and dry foam.

A bit of black pigment ink sponged around the outside as a vignette, and the stamped / handwritten title, finished it off.

I like how this has turned out - I can see me maybe using the same design one day for a quick teenagers' birthday card - my only regret is that the bottom Bind It All hole obliterated a cool rock hand :)

I am hoping I might even get another page done tomorrow night, fingers crossed.

Finally a bit of catch up on my A-Z Journal

I'm still behind, but now only 5 letters, not 7, and am starting to cultivate a glimmer of hope that I can catch up....

(not that I have the foggiest idea what I'm going to do for O, or for Q.... but will cross that bridge later)

K was a no brainer - this is supposed to be an A-Z of what makes me tick, after all. So K is for Kes.... my Krazy Kanuck Krush :) (ouch)

I was going for a pop art / offset print type of look on this one - but it has just ended up looking like he has kind of mutant shoulders :) Never mind, eh :)

(in reality, he has mighty fiiiiine shoulders, let me tell you :))



The second page features a beautiful photo of my mum, taken by my dad a long time ago. The original scan from my dad's photo album is below.

I used Photoshop to render the photo (extract it from its background), and sepia tone it. Then I printed the picture directly onto a sheet of cardstock that had been crumpled, tapped with distress ink pads in antique linen and tattered rose, sprayed with water and then ironed flat.

After sealing the print with an acrylic spray, I oversprayed it with a light application of Glimmer Mist in irridescent gold and then matted the page onto some paper with a houndstooth check pattern - which appealed to me for this page on my mum because she was such a snazzy dresser - always stylishly and immaculately turned out. So unlike her scruffy daughter.

The journalling for this one is on the back, a bit too personal for sharing.

Even if you have no interest in hockey....

... these video clips are interminably cute

First up - Ovi wants a wife (well did, this is quite an old clip) - any takers?? :)



....and I defy any red blooded woman (or gay man!) not to appreciate the last 30 seconds of clip two, which feature a dripping wet Alex Ovechkin wearing nothing but very tight lycra undercrackers and rather kinky boots.

I don't remember It's A Knockout ever being quite so racy - Russian TV is H-O-T :D



clips courtesy of the Tuvan Hillbilly

and it's live.....

Sorry for all the blog posts today - lots going on!

I am honoured to be involved in this project, I'm in some amazing company!

Go read over the next month (and while you are there if you are new to the Altered Page, have a look back and drool over some of Seth's artwork. His work is an absolute inspiration)

Oh oh oh, looooooooook!!!!!!

For someone who is addicted to trainers at the best of times, this is kind of like overdosing, which in itself is obviously a bad thing, but in this context it's good - endorphin overdrive - whoooooo!!!!!!!



Daps - love daps - of all the shoes on earth, love daps

My favourite CJ entry ever - love that too



On the shoes - look - on the shoes!!!!



My own unique beautiful shoes

Faint *klunk*

Oooh - fences from across the sea....

I've just got home from work to find a large (Tyvek, yay) envelope with a US postmark, with my swaps from the picket fence swap over on the In This House yahoo group....

From left to right my little fences are by Joanie (Maryland), Vicki (California) and Luna (Minnesota)

I love them all - and am going to use them as part of my Halloween decorations this year (I know the third one isn't HUGELY spooky as such, but vintage photos tend to make me think of ghosts so they all work for me.....)

I love getting nice surprises in the post, don't you?

Customised daps???? HOW cool????

Don't worry - I'm not going to order this exact pair :) I'm just playing..... but HOW cool to be able to put your own images on a shoe??? That's my little picket fence girl on the toe, and my Kes stencil on the side lol

I'm going to order some real ones once I decide what I want on them.....

Make your own here!

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!