Hero Arts

Man Card Monday: Go Wild!

April 23, 2018

Good morning! Happy Monday! Today is….. Man Card Monday! Last month, I decided that I needed to increase my stash of cards suitable for those hyper-masculine guys in my life… you know, the ones who probably wouldn’t appreciate a birthday card with flowers on it? (seriously, psh, what’s wrong with those weirdos?) Anyway, today is the second installment of Man Card Monday! (click here for last month’s project) Today’s project is uber simple, with just some die cuts and some vibrant ink blending. But you know, I’ve discovered that guys don’t need a whole lot of frills, right? At least that’s what I’m telling myself. Ha!

I began by blending Hero Arts’s Red Royal, Soft Apricot, and Butter Bar inks using my ink blending tool onto some white A2 card stock. I wanted to create a super bright and vibrant safari sunset, so I made sure to use plenty of layers and lots of ink. While that was drying, I die cut some fabulous safari-themed silhouettes (Thorn Tree and Fancy Grasses and Safari Huge Thanks) from Hero Arts and some black card stock. I love that this card has only a few simple die cuts on it, but those die cuts are so intricate that they make a huge impact!

I added the greeting from Birthday Hugs and Kisses at the bottom of the blended panel using Versafine and clear embossing powder to really make it stand out. I used foam tape to pop up the die cuts and create a sweet little sunset scene. No pink, no flowers, no sparkle, punny greeting, an animal… definitely qualifies as a Man Card in my view!

Well, that’s all for me today! I hope you’re enjoying this series… I’m definitely enjoying pushing myself outside of my natural floral inclinations!

Adding pops of color with colored pencils!

April 21, 2018

Good morning! I have a quick post for you today… I helped to create some Hero Arts projects for a trade show earlier this year, and I wanted to share this project with you before it got lost on my computer haha! This project is fairly monotone, but it has a few little pops of color that I added with my Prismacolor pencils.

I started by stamping Hero Arts’s Urban Skyline Bold Prints background onto some white card stock using Soft Granite ink. I wanted a subtle background so that I could add some bright pops of color. Next, I white heat embossed one of the sweet little houses, a tree, and a car from Welcome Neighbor onto some gray paper from the Midnight Mix Layering Papers. I’ll let you in on a little secret: the coating on the Hero Arts Layering Papers makes for super smooth colored pencil blending. 😉 I die cut the elements with their coordinating frame cuts, then added some pencil details using my Prismacolor colored pencils and blender pencil.

I heat embossed a greeting from Welcome Neighbor onto another panel of dark gray card stock, then matted it with some Pool card stock. I adhered a strip of white to ground the house, tree, and car, then added those elements with dimensional foam adhesive. I love how the super subtle (but still incredibly detailed background) makes that dark gray house with the teal roof just pop right off of the page!

Well, that’s all for me today! I hope you’re having a marvelous weekend!

April 2018 My Monthly Hero Blog Hop+Giveaway!

April 2, 2018

If you’re looking for the Autism Awareness Hop, please click here.

Good morning again! Today is the release date for the April My Monthly Hero kit… and it’s a fiesta in a box! There are so many sweet southwestern images included in this kit, and it’s a bargain at $34.99 (valued at over $70!). These kits frequently sell out, so it’s always a good idea to subscribe if you want to ensure that you’ll get your hands on one! The kit & add-ons go live in the Hero Arts store on Monday April 2nd at 1pm eastern/10am pacific. The main kit is available for a limited time only – once it’s gone, it’s gone. Kits begin shipping from Hero Arts on Friday April 6th.

You get so many fun, super festive goodies in this kit… including some absolutely amazing reactive ink cubes that I am dying to get my hands on! (They didn’t have them in time for us to get them for project creation, and boy oh boy do they look funnnnn!)I used the main kit for this festive little scene on the Hero Arts blog on Saturday, so I thought I’d make use of some of the fabulous add-ons, including Shake Your Bones and that amazing Blanket Pattern Bold Prints for my blog hop post today.

I made a little trio of cards using the images in Shake Your Bones. I just watched the tail end of the movie Coco, and these images totally remind me of that movie, even if I only watched just the last 15 minutes of it! (And, let me tell ya, even if I only watched 15 minutes of it, it was still enough to make me absolutely bawl. I shudder to think of the weeping that would occur should I ever watch the whole thing!) I have always loved the combination of bright, sunrise yellow, super hot pink, and bright purple… I even have called it my “fiesta” combination. I kept that color combo in mind when creating my cards today. For each card, I kept the layout nice and clean, with lots of white space and pops of color and pattern.

I stamped each skeleton image and coordinating greeting using Hero Arts’s Intense Black ink onto some Radiant White card stock, then colored them using Copic markers, which I’ll list individually below. I kept the coloring simple on the bones, using just C1 and C3 along with my Colorless Blender to help add some subtle shading to the bones.

Once the coloring was completed, I stamped the Blanket Pattern Bold Prints onto some black card stock and heat embossed using clear embossing powder. I love the subtle texture that adding the clear embossing gives to the background. I trimmed each white stamped panel down to leave plenty of space around the border to keep that pattern plenty visible, then adhered the white panels to the black patterned panels with dimensional foam adhesive.

Aren’t those so cute!? Clean, simple, but those images are so darn cute that you don’t need a whole lot of “extras,” amirite? Just some coloring, a bit of texture, and lots of clean white space. Perfect!

Now, for a giveaway!!! We are giving away one kit as a prize to one blog reader – selected from the comments across all of the blogs in the hop. The giveaway closes Sunday, April 8th at 11:59pm, and the winner will be announced the following week. The more comments you leave, the more chances you have to win! (If you purchase a kit and then win the contest, Hero Arts will reimburse you for your purchased kit!) Here’s the full hop lineup, so you can leave your comments:

The Hero Arts Blog
Laurie Willison
Yana Smakula
Janette Kausen
Nichol Spohr
Ilina Crouse
Kathy Racoosin
Clare Prezzia
Lydia Fiedler
Jessica Frost-Ballas
Kelly Latevola
Jana Millen
Amy Tsuruta
Emily Midgett<— you are here
May Park
Libby Hickson

Man Card Monday with Hero Arts!

March 19, 2018

So I’ve had this idea ruminating for awhile…. Man Card Monday. You know, like Man Crush Monday? I struggle so much with masculine cards. I naturally gravitate towards flowers… my brain just sees pretty much any design with a side of flowers. (#putafloweronit anyone?) So as I was coming up with my goals and plans for 2018, I came up with the idea of trying to build up my masculine card stash. Enter: Man Card Monday. I’m going to try to create at least one masculine card per month, which will hopefully grow my stash sufficiently so that I don’t have to frantically create something for my male family members at the last second (or worse, buy a card. Shudder.)

For today’s project, I wanted to use the fabulous new stencil from the March My Monthly Hero Kit add-ons. It’s so graphic and geometric, perfect for masculine cards. I’ve been enjoying doing ink blended backgrounds and adding Nuvo Glimmer Paste over the top, so I thought I would try using a dark color scheme for my masculine card.

I started by blending Hickory Smoke with Black Soot Oxide Inks on a plain A2 panel, then covering it with the Every Which Way stencil from the Hero Arts add-ons and Black Diamond Glimmer Paste. Isn’t that dimension and glitter just freaking cool looking?? Reminds me of some 80’s button up shirt haha!!

For the greeting, I die cut the Happy from the Happy Stamp & Cut from some glossy black card stock once, and twice more from white card stock. I trimmed a piece of gray card stock down and flagged the end, then heat embossed the greeting from the Happy Stamp & Cut stamp set. I added it to the stenciled card front using dimensional foam adhesive. I thought about adding sequins, but men aren’t really big on sparkle, right? I think? 😉

Well, that’s all for me today! I hope you’ll get some inspiration out of the Man Card Monday series… It’s definitely going to challenge me to think outside the box! Thanks for stopping by, and have a marvelous day!

Spellbinders March 2018 Release Blog Hop+giveaway!

March 14, 2018

Good morning! I have an exciting post for you today… Spellbinders is having a fabulous blog hop to celebrate their March Release. There are some truly stunning and versatile dies included in this new release of four new collections: Classics (March), On the Wings of Love by Joanne Fink, Good Vibes Only by Stephanie Low, and the Sew Sweet Collection by Tammy Tutterow. I was able to create three projects for today (including a video!) using some of the pretty new dies in the Sew Sweet Collection. You should have arrived here from Sharyn Johnson Sowell‘s blog, and your next stop is Melissa Phillips‘s blog.

For my first project, I used one of the pretty edgers in the Sew Sweet die collection combined with some loose watercoloring to create this simple-but-pretty project. Here’s a video on my process:

A quick overview of my process in case you can’t watch the video: I started by stamping and heat embossing a floral swag from Altenew’s Just Because stamp set on the upper corner of a panel of Arches Cold Press watercolor paper using pearl embossing powder. I then used the Hero Arts watercolors to do some simple, loose watercoloring.

After watercoloring my image, I used the ribbon scallop die in the Sew Sweet die collection to die cut some pretty blue card stock from Hero Arts. I threaded a white velvet ribbon through and added a white velvet bow. I stamped a greeting from Just Because using Versafine, then embossed it using the pearl embossing powder to create a pretty charcoal pearl embossed greeting. I popped up the ribbon scallop die cut using dimensional adhesive and added a thin strip of yellow card stock above it to further coordinate with the colors in the watercolored image.

For the next project, I focused on the adorable little scene building dies included in the Sweet Tweets die collection. I utilized my (ahem, extensive) colored card stock collection, die cutting several elements from brightly colored card stock. After I had a vague idea of how I wanted to arrange the die cuts, I blended some Salty Ocean Distress Oxide inks around the edge of a panel of polka dotted patterned paper (say that three times fast haha!) to create a halo of blue sky. I thought the polka dotted paper worked well with the homey, shabby chic look of the cute birdie and flowers!

I arranged the little scene using a combination of dimensional foam adhesive and liquid adhesive to create lots of dimension. After I had adhered everything to the card front, I added a few jewels and some Nuvo drops to the centers of the flowers. I love adding those little extra details to plain die cuts. The final step was to add a sweet sentiment from Papertrey Ink.

For this last project, I decided to add some Copic details to the pretty flowers in the Posies and Pennies die set from the Sew Sweet Collection. I started by die cutting several flowers from the Posies and Pennies die set using aqua, coral, white, and red card stock from Hero Arts. Because these die cuts are quite simple, I decided to add some shading and details with my Copic markers. I was able to quickly add some shading and made these plain flower and leaf die cuts pop with a few quick strokes of a Copic marker!

I die cut a pale gray stitched rectangle (this Posies and Pennies collection has a ton of versatile dies included in it!), then added some white die cut scalloped lines from the Sew Sweet die set. I arranged my flowers in a bouquet across my card front, then added some black to the centers of each flower, followed by some Hero Arts Crystal Lacquer pen. The greeting is a simple “you inspire me” from Altenew’s Penned Rose stamp set stamped in black on a strip of white card stock. I adhered it to the front of the bouquet. The final touch was to add some Oyster Gray Nuvo drops around the edge of the bouquet.

Well, what do you think of these fabulous new products?? Aren’t they just amazing? So many fun things you can do with Spellbinders dies!

How about a giveaway?! Spellbinders has generously offered a $25 gift certificate to the Spellbinders website for one lucky commenter! Simply leave a comment on this blog post by March 20, 2018 at noon. I will select a winner and announce it here on the blog!
(The winner is responsible for shipping cost, and any duties and/or taxes on their Spellbinders order.)

Sharyn Johnson Sowell

Emily Midgett

Melissa Phillips

Susie Lessard