GlitterAngel Art

Unbelievably exciting news!

I am so excited to tell you that I’ve been picked to join the amazingly talented girls on the Design Team of Daring Cardmakers.  Four new Design Team Members were picked, and I feel honoured to be joining

Fran, Keilly and Leo

If you have a moment, pop over to their blogs to see their beautiful cards.

Here’s this weeks challenge, set by Zuzana.

“To celebrate their arrival and also Zuzana's very first turn at dare-setting we have prizes from a brand new sponsor, the fabulous online and "bricks and mortar" craft shop:

Imagine That Shop Link

Join in this week, make sure you follow the rules, and you may be lucky enough to win one of three stamp sets from Imagine That in our Random Draw

Here are the rules:

1. add links to Imagine That and The Daring Cardmakers

2. link to no more than 5 other challenges.

So, are you ready to craft now?

Passion For Fashion

This week it's me Zuzana setting our dare for my very first time, so I hope you like what I have come up with!

I would like you to be a fashion designer and create some wow factor dress, shoes, handbags, lingerie . . . whatever you like from fashion”.

 

Here’s my card.  My little niece, Lola, is making her First Holy Communion next month, and like most little girls is very excited about her dress.  So I decide to make a lovely glittery dress for her card.

The dress is painted and glittered chipboard, and the skirt is a pearly vellum that doesn’t show too well in the photo, but is quite shimmery.  I’ve added a little ribbon waistband which is covered in glamour dust and a pearl, then I’ve added some little pearls to the neckline.  The greeting is also stamped onto pearly vellum, and I’ve added some little pearl flowers to the scallops.

DCM – Chasing Cars

This week’s challenge over at Daring Cardmakers is to create a card inspired by the Snowpatrol song ‘Chasing Cars’.  As I mentioned before, I’m working in London at the moment and my crafting time is being seriously limited so I didn’t have too much time to ponder this one.  I went for the slightly obvious lyric ‘show me a garden that’s bursting into life’. 

 

The flowers are die cut from crepe paper then scrunched and assembled.  The backing paper is lovely glittered paper from My Minds Eye, and I ran some kraft card through a cuttlebug folder then rubbed over a white ink pad to highlight the design. 

DCM Challenge – The Darling Bugs of May

The challenge this week over at Daring Cardmakers is to create a card featuring bugs.  This was an easy one for me, as although I’m not too keen on creepy crawlies, I do have lots of stamps with butterflies, dragonflies and these cute little bugs. 

 

 

The backing paper is from the Katlin collection by Crate, and I thought it would be perfect to create a garden background for my little bugs.  The stamps are mostly freebies from card magazines – and I love the bugs ’n’ kisses greeting which is from Pink Petticoat.  I’ve added some glamour dust, stickles and pearls to give it lots of dimension.  I think I shall save this card for one of my little nieces birthdays – my niece Georgie particularly likes creepy crawlies – funny girl :)   Sorry the photos aren’t brilliant – I still haven’t quite cracked my new camera phone, but I’m definitely finding the photos taken in the garden in good light are coming out best – not so good for the winter – I think I might have to bite the bullet and buy a decent camera.

Embossed backgrounds

I’ve been playing round with ideas for my class in Bromsgrove next week, and as we’ve already got a lot of cards from last time to include, I thought I’d think up some ideas for inexpensive cards.  I’ve made a selection of cards featuring backgrounds created from plain cardstock.  These first few cards are created using plain pastel cardstock, then I’ve stamped and embossed with clear embossing powder to create interesting backgrounds – very simple, but quite effective.

Apologies for the poor photos – still trying to get decent pics from my new phone…..

   

I’ll be back shortly with some other backgrounds using kraft card and embossing folders….

DCM Challenge – The flowers for May

Well I didn’t think I’d be back in my craft room in time to take part in this weeks Daring Cardmakers challenge as I’ve been working in London and staying with my brother for the last few weeks, but luckily I’m back at home for a couple of days at least, so the first thing I did was get into my craft room!

I decided to go for the Lily of the Valley as it’s one of my favourite flowers.  I’m afraid this isn’t the best photo.  I always take my card photos with my camera phone, and I’ve always had Sony Ericsson phones because they seem to be the best cameras.  Anyway I wanted a better quality phone with apps, and found that the HTC Mozart phone has (supposedly) a really good camera.  I will have to play around with the settings, and I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt at the moment as the light isn’t good, but if I don’t get better pics than this I’m going back to my old phone!

I didn’t have a suitable stamp to use for this card, so I searched the internet for a suitable image. The background is a Tim Holtz embossing folder, which I’ve swiped with a white ink pad.  I also added a bit of glamour dust to the flowers to give a bit of sparkle.

Bittie Birdies

It’s so lovely to have an extra long weekend – gives me so much more crafting time!  I’m still playing with my latest Papertrey stamps, and I just love this little bittie birdie set.  Works very well with the little chipboard trees we made in the last class.

Sorry the pictures are a bit grey – I was catching the last daylight in the garden so they’re not as bright as they should be.

I’m definitely going to have to get this doily die – it’s so versatile.

My stepdaughter is 18 next month – can’t quite believe it, she’s grown up so quickly.  She’s off to Magaluf to work for the summer, so I had to make her card a bit early so she can take it with her.

More chipboard circles!  It works well on this card, for such a special occasion I wanted it to be nice and sparkly!

I have another reason to be happy this weekend.  After 8 months of battling with Provocraft I have a new power cable for my Cricut machine, so I can wipe the dust off it and use it again.  I’m still completely speechless at the dreadful customer service from Provocraft and the fact that I wrote two letters to their CEO which he didn’t reply to, or act on.  I was quite close on a couple of occasions to just giving up and throwing the machine in the bin, but finally, after probably about 20 phone calls to their European helpdesk and several letters, another Cricut user in the States stepped in to help me and emailed some contacts she had at Provocraft (who replied to say it was nothing to do with them as it was a European power cable – can you believe it – they are the head office and the bloody things are made in China anyway so the manufacture and distribution is still probably arranged from the US).  However, I think just the fact that she contacted several people made someone actually look into it, and a day later I got a phone call to say one was on the way to me.  I could have kissed the DHL man when it arrived yesterday.  Even though I got there in the end, the whole experience has seriously put me off their products – after all, a Cricut machine is not a cheap thing to buy.  I had been toying with the idea of getting an Imagine before all this, but there’s no way I would spend that much on a product that you might not be able to get parts for if anything goes wrong.  The US companies used to be well known for their fantastic customer service, so it’s a shame to see that isn’t the case anymore.  I had a similar rubbish experience with Ellison over a Tim Holtz sizzix die, so it’s not just Provocraft.  I love their products so I hope they invest a bit of money to provide the follow up service that they should for these machines. 

That’s my rant over with, I’m going to lie down in a dark room now :)