frustrated

So, I have been following various blogs for card ideas and techniques and one of those blogs is Hero Arts (which you should add to your list right now if you haven't already!!). I have been wanted to participate in their challenges but I didn't have any of their stamps because I'm poor. BUT...they had a couple deals I couldn't resist. The first was if I spent $50, I'd get a free gift, and the second was a discount on the featured stamp of the week...long story short, I now have 3 clear stamp sets, two cling stamps and a wood block stamp from Hero Arts :) :) yayyy! and let me tell you, I never knew that there could be such a thing as a great quality clear stamp! They're thick and peel really nicely off the backing (some of my other brand's clear stamps I really had to pull and felt like I was going to rip it in half), so they were worth the $15 per set. Even though they are almost all christmas stamps I couldn't resist playing!

NEW STAMPS!

Free stamp set

Here's where my frustration begins. I've had a glue pad for awhile now, but I absolutely hate working with glitter. Yes, it is pretty but it gets everywhere and is impossible to clean off hands or clothes. However, I pushed my differences aside and decided to at least try it because it would make some of my cards look really nice. Here's the thing: if you just put the stamp on the glue pad, you'll get too much glue and it will stamp as a blob (i was using snowflakes, which was probably not the best to start out with), but if you use too little, there's not enough glue for the glitter! I finally found a somewhat happy medium and stamped my snowflakes and put glitter on and left it over night. I was informed by Martha Stewart's blog to lightly brush away the glitter using a paint brush, so I took out a small fan brush and pushed the remaining glitter off....but the darn thing took my stamped image with it!! There was no way to get all of the glitter off of the card without ruining the image. I tried a second time and the results were a bit better but some still look like blobs or just parts of snowflakes. If anyone ever reads this blog, could you give me some advice? I seriously need help. I might instead switch to heat embossing but don't have the money yet to invest in the embosser its self or the powders. Heres how the card looks:

See how some look okay and then others look like blobs of stuff? I can't seem to separate the loose glitter from the image without taking the image off completely! :( I might brush it all off and just buy white ink, but I really like how the glitter looks. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!

Since this card took so much time to mess with, there are no others...but next weekend I'm hoping to get a lot done :)