Hero Arts September 2023 My Monthly Hero Release Blog Hop + Giveaway!

Hi friends! Hero Arts is releasing their utterly gorgeous September 2023 My Monthly Hero Kit + Collection today, and we’re hopping along to celebrate and inspire! You should have arrived here from Dana Joy, and your next stop is Ilina Crouse. You can also start back at the beginning at the Hero Arts Blog! Feast your eyes upon this glorious, autumn-themed Classic Kit, with contents individually valued at $73, but available for purchase for only $36.99:

Our September release includes one of our most popular product combinations – a window die with coordinating layering stencils! In this beautiful fall-themed kit, the window is decorated with leaves and mushrooms, ideal for the autumn season. The Classic Kit‘s 4×6 stamp set features decorated script messages which can nestle perfectly within the window. There are four ink cubes to use with the layering stencils, and a white lacquer pen for adding spots to your mushrooms – or for any other creative ideas you may have! And calling all shaker card aficionados – we’ve got you covered with clear card panels in the kit, too.

Now for a peek at the Premium Kit, which contains all of the elements of the Classic Kit as well as some fantastic additional coordinating items valued at $111, but available for purchase for $49.99:

The Premium Kit includes additional elements to extend the potential for more cards and techniques – even more Creativity In The Box! In addition to all of the Classic Kit components, the highlight of our expanded kit is a 4″ x 6″ stamp set with adorable dancing critters. Use the images individually, or build a scene of them dancing around a bonfire in a pumpkin patch on a crisp fall evening! There are coordinating dies for the stamps as well as extra leaf and mushroom dies. Take your coloring up a notch by trying our Contour Ink, helpful for “no line” coloring. The Premium Kit is rounded out with two sheets of our shimmery Bronze Glitter Paper.

If you don’t want to subscribe to the Premium Kit, you can also purchase just these additional My Monthly Hero Premium Elements separately. Such a great option to get these beautiful additions! (You can always subscribe to be guaranteed a kit each month, because they sell out frequently and are not restocked!)

I am honestly not huge on orange, which is a bit of a problem when creating autumn-themed projects! For some reason, I think of the orange of the 1970’s, with orange couches, orange tupperware dishes, orange shag carpet… meh! While I don’t love orange on it’s own, I do love it when paired with pink, magenta, fuchsia, plum, and/or mustard. The bright pinks and purples help to liven the orange up and modernize it a bit to make it palatable to my eye.

The Classic Kit and Premium Kit both feature such stunning woodland themes, but the oval fancy window die from the Classic Kit made me audibly gasp with it’s beauty! The Classic Kit includes layering stencils to make adding color to these images a cinch, but I wanted to stretch my watercoloring legs and create some super colorful and vibrant mottled color on this crown of autumn leaves.

I started by die cutting the large fancy window die from the Classic Kit from some heavyweight hot press watercolor paper. I added color to the images using my Karin watercolor markers, scribbled out onto my glass work mat and picked up with my damp paintbrush. I kept the color scheme very autumnal, with touches of muted brown for the mushrooms, adding lots of vivid color to the fall foliage dancing around the window. To allow the colors to meld seamlessly into one another, I simply wet each individual leaf and dropped different colors onto the wet areas, allowing the wet watercolor to bloom into each other and blend together to create these vibrant and colorful leaves!

After I had finished watercoloring this super gorgeous, detailed die cut, I heat embossed a greeting from the Classic Kit onto the center of a panel of white cardstock using Brass embossing powder. I then lightly blended Spicy Mustard, Pumpkin, Azalea, and Plum Core Inks onto the embossed sentiment panel. I love that these inks coordinate so beautifully with the watercolored images! I popped up the watercolored die cut panel with some foam tape over the blended background panel. I am totally in love with this card, in spite of my general dislike of the color orange!

My second card features the precious images from the stamp set in the Premium Kit, which also comes with Contour Ink, my favorite ink for use with no-line coloring. I stamped the sweet fox and autumnal accessories onto some watercolor paper using Contour Ink, then again used my Karin watercolor markers to add some vivid color to the images. I also die cut several of the standalone leaf dies included with the frame cuts in the Premium Kit and watercolored them using the same wet-on-wet technique that I used on the first card.

For the background, I used more shocking pink to help enliven the orange tones on the watercolored images with some of the new(ish) Fuchsia + Gold Metallic Spray from Hero Arts. I spritzed the white background panel once with the spray, creating an area upon which I could build my scene. The shimmer from these sprays is unreal and so hard to catch in a photograph! I popped up my watercolored die cut fox to the vivid magenta panel and then built my scene with the pumpkins, mushrooms, and leaves, adhering some with liquid and some with foam adhesive to add extra dimension. I embossed a sentiment from the Premium Kit using more Brass embossing powder, then trimmed it down to a smaller rectangle and tucked it amongst the leaves swirling on the background. I mounted the panel on a slightly larger piece of gold glitter cardstock, then mounted that on a full size A2 panel of Plum cardstock. The final touch was to add a few sparkling gems!

Well, that’s all for my projects today! (I have lots of ideas for the fabulous Add-On Products, just not enough hours in the day! You should check them out!) Now for some fun giveaway information:

To celebrate this release, Hero Arts will give away a $50 gift card, drawn from the comments left across the hop. Enter by Sunday, September 10th at 11:59pm Pacific, and the winner will be announced on the Hero Arts blog the following week.

Your next stop is Ilina Crouse. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and happy hopping!