
Hi there! Today, Hero Arts is celebrating the release of their 2021 Catalog, and we have a blog hop to show it off with so many fun projects and fantastic guests!! You should have arrived here from Debi Adams and your next stop is Ilina Crouse. The new catalog has a huge array of wonderful new products, including some splendid new standalone dies perfect for making super festive birthday cards. I have two projects to share with you today using these new products, so let’s get started with the details!

Both of my projects are birthday themed and feature what I like to call my “fiesta” color scheme: tangerine, fuchsia, and plum, with some pops of bright, clean white. I created sparkly base layers for both projects by covering two white A2 card bases with Embossing Ink, then sprinkling them with Sparkle Embossing Powder and heat embossing to create custom glitter paper!

For this first project, I used the new Birthday Message Cover Plate die with some ink blending and the custom sparkle paper. I began by blending Tangerine, Raspberry Jam, and Grape Juice inks with a foam blending tool to achieve really deep, saturated color.

I die cut the new Birthday Message Cover Plate die from this super colorful blended panel, then adhered it with liquid adhesive to the sparkling background panel. Super flat and easy to pop in the mail! (And even kinda gender neutral, if you count the Raspberry Jam ink as more of a red than a pink!)

For my second project, I focused on the fantastic new Balloon Window Fancy Die. One of my favorite ways to treat these intricate dies from Hero Arts is to add Copic coloring to the detailed die cuts. It’s so fun to see the dies come to life with the addition of some color, but they are just as fun to use with a different medium! You could do ink blending, watercoloring, even leave them plain and have fun texture on your card front. I colored the balloons using my “fiesta” color scheme, but you could easily make this a very masculine or neutral card by switching up the Copic colors! It would be great with blues or aquas for a baby boy or shades of deep blue and green for a guy!

I adhered the Copic colored die cut card front to my sparkly background panel using liquid adhesive, then added a greeting using a dimensional die cut “happy” (cut three times from the Happy Fancy Die and adhered together), as well as some sentiment strips stamped from the Mix and Match Compliments set, which I adhered with some foam adhesive for lots of dimension.
Well, that’s all for my projects today! Now for some fun giveaway information:
Comment on the hop by Wednesday, February 24th at 11:59pm pst for a chance to win one of three $50 gift certificates to the Hero Arts store. The more blogs you leave comments on, the more chances to win!
Your next stop is Ilina Crouse. Thanks for stopping by today, and happy hopping!

