Busy, busy, busy......

So I have been working on the Christmas gifts that I make every year for a few family members. For several years, I have made 12" by 12" calendars. I make four each year. I'm posting some of the pictures from last years calendar (2008) now, and I'm almost done with my 2009 calendars, so I will post those pictures when I finish, which has to be soon since they are Christmas gifts.

Make it a great day, and remember to journal life!

-Denise

Back from CHA and CKU

I know it's been awhile since I've posted, but it has been a busy time. I guess that's my only excuse. In July, I was in Chicago at CHA with My Tattered Angels. It was a crazy, fun time, doing lots of demos and meeting some new great people. Our booth was absolutely beautiful, and I wish these pictures showed all the details. It was stunning to see it all come together so nicely.

Then last week I was in Provo, Utah, attending CKU. What a fabulous and exhausting week! I was able to take several new classes where I learned some really great things that I am very anxious to apply to my crafting. I even had the opportunity to introduce many scrapbookers to Glimmer Mist and all the Tattered Angels products at the Sneak, Peek and Mingle event.

Here's a picture with my friend Donna and new friends, Lisa Bearnson, Diane, and Kandi. This was taken during our day of inspiration stations, a day filled with great activities from many of the top people in the scrapbooking industry! Tons of fun!

So now, the traveling is done (for a little while) and it is back to reality. It seems like just week I was posting how nice it was to finish up the school year and give finals to my students, and here I am getting ready to start the year again. Where has this summer gone!!

For those of you in the Fort Collins/Loveland area, I will be at the My Tattered Angels booth at the Budweiser Event Center for the show this weekend. I'll be there all day Saturday and Sunday....stop by and say "hi!".

Have a great day!

Heritage canvas

I'm getting ready to leave early in the morning for CHA in Chicago. I wanted to finish one more project before I started packing, so I made this canvas this afternoon. I chose a picture of my maternal grandmother (on the right) and her sister. I think this was taken around 1925, not exactly sure when. I love the serious expressions, the round glasses, and the beauty in their young faces.

I sprayed the background with walnut gold and starfish glimmer mist. I used the large flourish screen and then used coffee shop over the screen. I matted the photo, and used two corner pieces from the Creme de chocolate regal chips. Then I layered the corresponding glimmer glass corners on top of the chips. I distressed the key before attaching it with fibers. I used the flourish glimmer glass, added some lace and pearl strings around the border. Then I sprayed the flowers with walnut gold and attached them to the corner.

Hope to see you in Chicago! Have a great day!

Heritage box

Today I have been working on display samples for the CHA show in Chicago this week. We're going to have a much larger booth at this show, so all the designers have been busy making fabulous display samples for the booth. I worked on this trinket box and a couple of clipboard that we will us at the show. I sprayed this box with a layer of walnut gold glimmer mist. After it dried, I used the glimmer screens on the box and sprayed coffee shop glimmer mist.

For the embossed glimmer chips, I used glimmer mist colors sage and walnut gold. I also inked the raised edges with vintage photo distress ink. When it was too dark, I resprayed the walnut gold over it to make the ink more subtle looking.

I added a light green taffeta ribbon, and decided to spray some flowers with walnut gold and add those too. I hope you can see the shimmer that the glimmer mist adds! It was fun to put together!

Have a great day!

Paint Can Buckets

Yesterday I worked on these paint can buckets. They go together rather quickly and are a lot of fun to make. I plan to give these away as gifts filled with lots of fun goodies inside. It's a great way to give a gift for someone,rather than wrapping or a gift bag. Think of the great themes you could do....baby showers, birthdays, holidays, weddings..... You can get the cans for just a few dollars at a store like Home Depot. Decorate with fun papers, ribbons and other embellishments!!

Have a great day!!

Home again....

We made it back from the Great American Scrapbook Convention in Chantilly, VA. What a fun, but busy, three days! We met lots of really great people, many who knew about Glimmer Mist, and many others that didn't know and were thrilled to learn about it! It's always so exciting to me to see the "WOW" factor in crafters just learning about Glimmer Mist. What fun!! Our first day was spent setting up the booth, which looked great!

This is a shot of our demo area at the booth. We decided to hang the screens to help keep the table area less cluttered throughout the day. It really worked well, and it displayed the screens to the customers as well.

After we set up the booth we were able to go into DC for a few hours and see some sights. This was especially cool for me since I have never been to DC before. So we took the subway in from our hotel in Arlington. We did a lot of walking, but we were able to see the Capitol building, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial Wall, and the White House.

It's great to have the opportunity to see some things that I've never had the opportunity to see before, even if we are extremely tired! It's still worth it!!

Have a great day!

Weekend fun....

This weekend I've been working on cleaning and organizing my scrapbook room. It seems to need a good cleaning every six months or so, I've been trying to getting that done. I didn't finish the chore, I got distracted and began playing with making my own background paper. This project really started in just that way. I wanted to use some of the Glimmer Screens to make my own background. I chose a brown cardstock, the flourish screens and the new decorative corner screens. I placed them randomly on the cardstock and then used red velvet Glimmer Mist. After spraying it, I liked it immediately, but still didn't know what I planned to do with it. The next day when I looked at it, I thought it resembled good colors for a heritage page. So I loked though all my scanned photos and chose this one with my mom, her sister, and my grandparents. I think it must have been taken about 1942. My mom is the older of the two girls.

I really like the look of the Glimmer Glass flourish on the page. It is actually tinted brown, but because of it's transparency it blends with the color behind it beautifully and allows you to see through it to the page and even the picture where it overlaps. The possibilities for these new Glimmer Glass pieces are endless!!

I also used two pieces of Glimmer Chips. I like the look of using one or two corner pieces to add dimension to the page. On both embossed pieces, I colored them with GM red velvet and silver. They really shine nicely and adds just that extra interest to the page, without taking away from the picture itself. The really great thing is how quickly this page came together. Once the idea came, it was put together very quickly!

Have a great day!

I'm back....

We made it back from the Great American Scrapbook Convention in Arlington, TX. We had a fun time, but very busy! Setting up the booth and getting everything organized takes nearly the whole day, but it ended up looking great. Then we had three full days of doing demos and sales. It's always fun for me to show enthusiastic crafters that have not seem the Glimmer Mist and Screens. The WOW factor is huge!! We took a picture on the first day when another design team member, Vicki Chrisman, came over to check out the new product. From left to right is Wendy, owner and creator of Tattered Angels, Vicki, Allison (Tattered Angel business manager), and me.

Now that we're back from Arlington, we're already packing and getting ready for our next show in Chantilly, VA, June 20-21, another Great American Scrapbook Convention. Never a dull moment with us!

Playing with the new products....

Today I finally had time to play with the new products. I needed a winter photo, so I chose this one of my daughter, Kaitlyn, checking out the snow and ice on the tree in our front yard. I've always enjoyed the fun look on her face, so thought it would be fun to use. I used an 8 x 10 canvas. First I laid down the new snowflake screens from the Winter Crystals, and used a new Glimmer Mist color, twilight, to spray over them. After it dried, I also sprayed a fine mist of one of my favorite Glimmer Mist colors, silver. I also prepared a piece of white cardstock for the photo mat, spraying it with twilight. I inked the edges of the torn photo mat and used a variety of fibers to add interest. I used new Glimmer Chips and Glimmer Glass to finish the look of the project. I chose two white embossed chips that I sprayed with twilight and silver, then inked the edges of those.

I decided on some of the snowflakes, added a fun bling jewel in the center and then decided on the tree off to the side. I also used the transparent decorative corners on three of the corners on the photo. I really liked the dimension of the Glimmer Chips on the canvas along with the transparent look the Glimmer Glass has to offer!

Here's a close up of the bottom right corner. Hopefully you can see some of the beautiful detail the Glimmer Mist adds to the project. It certainly has been fun playing today!!

Finally done....

So school is now finally done, so hopefully I can begin to enjoy my summer and the many travels I will be doing this summer for Tattered Angels. I'm very excited to share with you some of the samples of the newest products! The first is the new Glimmer Chips called Frosty Memories, a vintage seasons collection of 49 chip board pieces. This line will also have three different choices, the stamped version, the ephemera, and the white embossed. Notice the beautiful detail in these ephemera pieces.




And for those of you who already love the Glimmer Screens, there are now new screens to add to your collection. Four new packages (each with 3 new screens) will add to your collection of screens. These screens will complement and coordinate with the new Glimmer Chips. The four new additions are Decorative Corners, Winter Trees, Winter Crystals, and Vintage Ice. These Victorian-inspired screens will add the perfect touch to your scrapbooks, cards, and other craft projects!



The last really cool new product to tell you about is something really new to Tattered Angels. It's called Glimmer Glass. These pieces will coordinate with the current Regal and Frosty Memories line. They are beautiful transparent overlays. These can be stamped, sprayed with Glimmer Mist, bent or curled.....the possibilities are endless! They will add a wonderful elegant touch to any project you may be working on!





These pictures show only a small sampling of what you will get in each package! Remember, these new products won't be available until mid to late July. Look for samples made with these new products from the Tattered Angels Design Team soon!

Having a little fun....

Here's a really fun picture of Wendy, the owner and creator of Tattered Angels. This was taken

at the Memories Expo in NJ after a busy day of doing demo and sales. You can see she is happiest when she's good and messy! :) It's a good thing the Glimmer Mist washes off!

We'll have our six new colors of Glimmer Mist at the Great American Scrapbook Convention in Arlington next week. Those new colors are sage, cinnamon, auburn, simply khaki, twilight and huckleberry. They work beautifully together for splendid fall images. If you plan to be at the show, be sure to stop by and check them out!

I'm also super excited about the new Glimmer Chips and Screens that will be out in July! I'm anxious to begin playing and creating with them. Check back later for a sneak peek of these new products! Until then, I still have one more day of school left!

Almost done...

As I sat and watched my students take their finals today, I realize how happy I am that the school year is almost over! I'm glad so I can finish up at school and begin to focus on the summer and use the "other side of my brain"! Much of my summer I will be busy creating and traveling for Tattered Angels as a Designer, demo artist, and production assistant. My next trip is to the Great American Scrapbook Convention in Arlington, TX. I leave for that show on June 3rd.

I feel very fortunate to be on the Tattered Angels Design Team. Check out the blogs of the other six extremely talented designers listed under links on the right hand side. They continue to inspire me with their ideas and creativity! I'm also blessed to know Wendy Senger, the owner and creator of My Tattered Angels (http://www.mytatteredangels.com/) and all the fabulous products she has created! It's very exciting to be a part of the early stages of a new and upcoming company, and to work with all the great individuals who make up the creative team at Tattered Angels (shout out to all the warehouse Glimmer Chicks, day and night crew!).

Being a teacher, and having my summers off, gives me the opportunity to travel to scrapbook conventions across the US with Wendy and others from Tattered Angels. It's great fun going to these shows and meeting customers excited about the Glimmer Mist, Glimmer Chips, and Glimmer Screens! It's even more fun to demo these fabulous products and see the enthusiastic response from everyone! With these travels I also get to meet many talented designers and artists in the scrapbook industry. My first opportunity was at winter CHA in Anaheim, CA, and was that fun, but a little overwhelming. More recently, I went to the Memories Expo in NJ with Wendy and her office manager, Trish. Oh the stories we could tell! We threaten to write a book about our four day adventure, so watch out! We had so much fun and met tons of really awesome people! (and even saw a little of New York!)

So, I will keep you posted on future excursions with Tattered Angels. Next show, as mentioned earlier, is the Great American Scrapbook Convention in Arlington, TX - June 5 - 7th. Hope to see you there!

More photos of mini album

Life's been busy.......

Yes, life has been busy! Trying to learn how to set up this blog site has been challenging enough, but I'm also trying to end the last few weeks of school (I teach at a high school) and also get my daughter graduated and throw a graduation party. Thankfully, the graduation is over and the party was a success! Friends and family from a couple of different states + a backyard barbeque + a sunny day = a great afternoon party! I made this fun mini book (Senior) for my daughter, Brianna, for her graduation. I included pictures we've taken during this year with family and friends. She was very excited when she saw it and it was the hit of the party! It was fun to create using papers in her high school colors and embellishments, ribbons and fibers to add dimension. I sanded and inked the edges of the letters for a bit of a distressed look, even though the content of the mini album didn't really call for that look. I enjoy distressing most everything I work on!!