Emily Midgett
Good morning! I am thrilled to say that I’m hopping along on the Ellen Hutson blog with Altenew today to help celebrate Altenew’s 4th birthday! I used some old Altenew, some new Essentials By Ellen, and lots and lots of flowers! I hope you will stop by to take a peek at what I’ve created!
Here’s a little sneak peek:
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
Good morning! Today, I have the pleasure of taking part in a fantastic blog hop: Autism Awareness Blog Hop. So very many families have a loved one who has been diagnosed as being on the spectrum; I myself have two family members on the spectrum. I am so honored that Veronica Zalis asked me to be a part of this blog hop today, and it’s in honor of those family members that I created this card! In honor of this worthy cause, Taylored Expressions has created a very special stamp set called Look With Your Heart, containing beautiful encouragement sentiments. Taylored Expressions also is committed to donating 25% of the proceeds from the sales of this set during the month of April to the Autism Society.
The hope for this blog hop is to bring awareness and a bit of compassion to those families affected by this diagnosis. My cousin (who is like a sister to me) has a son six months younger than my own children, and watching her joys and struggles with her son has been such an eye-opening experience for me. The parents of children with autism are truly superheroes. It’s one of those situations that you will never truly understand unless you have walked in their shoes, and they deserve every ounce of compassion and love that we can muster.
While the sentiments in this beautiful Look With Your Heart stamp set are all incredible and so poignant, one of the sentiments particularly spoke to me: “Every child is a different kind of flower, and all together make a beautiful garden.” Each child is their own person. Each child has their own value, their own contribution to society. They all are capable of making us better people, and together we can make the world a better place for them.
I started by stamping the beautiful Floral Trimmings stamp from Studio Katia and silver heat embossing it on some watercolor paper. I then placed strips of washi tape on the embossed panel and watercolored it using the same technique that I demonstrated in this video. Stripes and florals are super chic this spring, so I wanted to bring that trend in to this card. I wanted pretty pastel blue florals, so I used Daniel Smith’s French Ultramarine.
After peeling off my washi masking tape stripes, I worked on watercoloring the florals. I used a variety of colors of Daniel Smith watercolor tubes (helping to bring home my chosen sentiment with lots of different flowers ;)), including Quinacridone Pink, New Gamboge, Alizarin Crimson, and Hooker’s Green. (I’ll link them all below!) I stamped the same floral image from Floral Trimmings on a piece of scrap watercolor paper, then watercolored just a portion of it and fussy cut it to have an extra little floral element.
Once my watercoloring was complete, I turned to the greeting. I stamped the lovely sentiment from the Taylored Expressions Look With Your Heart stamp set onto some heavyweight vellum and heat embossed it using silver embossing powder. I then scored it and folded the edge over the edge of my floral panel and hid the adhesive on the back of the card. (You have to be sneaky with vellum or else that ugly adhesive shows right through!) I used the other fussy cut floral piece to hide some more adhesive in the corner of the vellum sentiment panel. Isn’t that sentiment just stunning?
I hid some more adhesive behind some Sparkling Clear sequins, then added a thin strip of silver glitter paper on the edge of the card front for a little sparkle.
Well, that’s all for my project today! I hope you’ll check out all of the different sponsors for this hop… there are some absolutely incredible prizes from some absolutely incredible and generous sponsors (including some of my absolute favorite companies… Ellen Hutson, Hero Arts, and Honeybee Stamps). There is a wealth of inspiration and encouragement to be found along this hop, and I hope you will check out each stop!
There is also an opportunity for you to create your own Autism-themed project and link it up to the InLinkz for an additional chance to win one of these fabulous prizes!
Good morning! Today, some of the ladies from Ellen Hutson have a treat for you. We are helping to introduce a new product line to the Ellen Hutson lineup: Pattern Happy. If you’re unfamiliar with this particular company, definitely go take a look at the products that are now available in the Ellen Hutson shop! They’re darling. They offer some really adorable patterned papers in addition to the sweetest stamps. I’m talking rainbows, flowers, and hearts. Doesn’t get much cuter than that!! For my projects today, I chose to work with Bloom Builder, Mini Greetings, and the Mini Containers dies, in addition to some of the fabulous patterned papers.
One of the things that struck me most with the patterned papers was the ability to customize the black and white stack called Color Me. I chose to color just a few of the hearts from this fairly simple pattern. Nothing more classic than black and white with a pop of pink! I used just one Copic marker on this A2 panel, then added some Crystal Lacquer over the top of the colored hearts to give some dimension.
Next, I trimmed three very thin strips of black card stock and adhered them to my colored heart panel. I also die cut a simple little label from the Mini Containers dies from some bright pink card stock, then added a heat embossed greeting from the Mini Greetings stamp set and popped it up with foam adhesive. I love when you can use a piece of patterned paper to make an easy but big impact on your card front!
For my second card today, I wanted to combine the fabulous thin black and white stripe patterned paper from the Geofetti paper pack with the pretty, graphic flowers from the Bloom Builder stamp set. I stamped the flower using pretty pink and green inks from Altenew, then added the details to the center of the flower and the greeting (from Mini Greetings) using Versafine and clear embossing powder. One of my favorite pattern combinations is to put stripes and flowers together… so perfect, and super chic this spring! I trimmed two strips of the black and white striped paper and adhered it to the edge of my card front, then trimmed down the long edges of my stamped panel. I added two very thin strips of turquoise card stock to the edge just to add a little pop and help define the edges of the white panel. The final step was to pop up the stamped panel with some dimensional adhesive!
Well, that’s all for my stop on the blog hop! What do you think of these adorable products!? Aren’t they fabulous? Not only do we have bunches of inspiration, we have prizes!!! Make sure to leave comments at each stop on the hop for a chance to win one of two Pattern Happy prize packs! Leave your comments before April 5th, at 11:59pm PST. Winners will be contacted via email.
For a very important date.
Seriously, story of my life. I blame my minions. They’re cute, and they can’t read yet, so let’s just go with that.
I am SO sorry. I’m behind on posting the winners for the Technique Tuesday and Spellbinders giveaways… Better late than never, I guess?
Congratulations to Sheryl and Bonnie!! Please, please get me your information ASAP so that I can get it to the appropriate companies!
Thank you to all who entered the giveaways!
