partners

Good morning! Today, I have the pleasure of taking part in another Hero Arts Partners blog hop. You should have arrived here from Caly Person, and your next stop is Ilina Crouse. Hero Arts is celebrating a whopping 45 years in this fantastic crafting industry, and to help them celebrate this momentous occasion and our fantastic industry in general, several different crafting companies have partnered up with Hero Arts to release collaborative stamp sets! This month, we’re pairing up with Altenew to release this absolutely stunning floral: Bloom and Grow. This stamp set features an incredible, gigantic peony bloom, as well as several fantastic sentiments. I’ve paired this beautiful flower with some no-line pencil coloring, ink blending, and white splatters, so let’s get started with the details!

Any time I do no-line pencil coloring on colored cardstock, 99% of the time, I will reach for my Hero Arts Unicorn White ink pad. It stamps details beautifully and crisply on colored cardstock, as well as blending into the pencil coloring seamlessly. I stamped the large peony image from Bloom and Grow on an A2 panel of Papaya Hero Hues cardstock using Unicorn White ink, then using some Post-It notes as masks, stamped the foliage in three different spots as well.

Once I had all of the stamping finished, I dug out my long-neglected Polychromos colored pencils (I just can’t seem to find the time to really dig in with my colored pencils these days!), because this blooms was just dying to be colored in pencils. It’s so massive that you can really dig down into the nooks and crannies and get some fabulous shading and depth. I’m not going to lie; this was not a quick process, and while some might find the amount of time that I spend on my pencil projects excessive, I find the coloring completely therapeutic and just what I needed after some really tough weeks.

Once I had finished coloring, I lightly blended some Raspberry Jam ink on the opposite corner of the penciled panel, then covered the flower up with some more Post-It notes and splattered some White Liquid Watercolor in the blended area. I added a greeting that I’d white embossed on some Palm cardstock using foam tape, then trimmed just a bit off of the penciled panel and mounted it in the top corner of an Azalea panel.

Well, that’s all for my project! Now, we have some fun giveaways for you:

There will be 3 prizes, drawn from comments left across the blog hop:
– One winner will receive the stamp set!
– One winner will receive a $25 shopping spree at Altenew
– One winner will receive a $25 shopping spree at Hero Arts

Hoppers have until Sunday, October 27th to leave their comments, and the winner will be announced on the Hero Arts blog the following week. The more comments you leave, the more chances you have to win!

Your next stop is Ilina Crouse. I’ve also got the whole hop list below in case you get lost. Happy hopping!