Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Hero Arts Hostess Blog Hop

Hello and welcome to your next stop on the Hero Arts Hostess Hop, featuring fabulous stamps from the new 2014 release!

You should have arrived here from the blog of my friend, the super talented Sally Sherfield. If you come across a broken link, you can find a master list of the hop links at the Hero Club Blog. Also, please report broken links to blog@heroarts.com.


Don’t forget to leave comments as you hop. Hero Arts will be awarding prizes from randomly drawn comments. For a chance to win, simply comment on ANY of the stops along the hop on ANY day, including each day’s starting post at the Hero Club Blog. The more comments you leave, the better your chance of winning. I know Hero Arts prizes are always fantastic, so best of luck! I have comment moderator switched on, so don’t worry if your comment doesn’t appear immediately.

Every year I look forward with great anticipation to Hero Arts’ new releases and the 2014 catalogue is packed full of so many wonderful products! Thanks to the generosity of Hero Arts, I’ve had a chance to play with some of the new stamps and oh my goodness what fun I’ve had getting inky with them since they arrived!

For my first card I started off by using the cute owls and a sentiment from the Lil Hoot set. I think the Lil Hoot set is so adorable, with super cute images and a lovely range of sentiments. This set also happens to be one of Hero Arts Operation Write Home stamps. Hero Arts donates 25% of the profits from the sale of its OWH stamps to the Operation Write Home organisation. The frame for the owl was made from the outer part of the main image from the A Little set. On this card I also used the Tiny Flags and Tiny Star backgrounds which are such great background stamps and are ones I know I will use over and over again.


Supplies: Stamps (Hero Arts Lil Hoot, Hero Arts Tiny Flags, Hero Arts A Little and Hero Arts Tiny Star Background), card (white, kraft, blue & pink), VersaMark, white embossing powder, black ink, distress inks (antique linen & faded jeans), ProMarkers and glossy accents.

For the next card I again used the A Little stamp set. Although I've only had this set a little over a week, I have already lost track of the amount of times I’ve inked it up – I LOVE it so much. The other day I used it to make a wrap for a chocolate bar and I’ve also made numerous gift tags, using a variety of the sentiments, for use at a later date. This time I made another card and went on a bit of a pink rampage as you can see!


Supplies: Hero Arts A Little stamp set, pink & white card, pink Core'dinations card, Hero Arts pale tomato mid-tone shadow ink, VersaMark, white embossing powder, Sizzix dotted lattice embossing folder and heart rhinestones.

As I mentioned, there are lots of fun sentiments included in the A Little set, but I decided to add a different one to the little tag below:)


Stamp: Hero Arts A Little

Coming up to my birthday and Christmas, I may just have to strategically place the catalogue and tag somewhere in my house as a subtle, or maybe not so subtle, hint;)

Because I love all of the critters in the Lil Hoot set so much, I couldn’t stop at making one card and ended up making a little set of cards. It's hard to tell from the photos but parts of the images are layered on foam pads for some extra dimension. This was a really quick and easy process because of the way that the critters are drawn. I pulled the Tiny Flags background back out again for a bit of embossing on the backgrounds.





Supplies: Stamps (Hero Arts Lil Hoot, Hero Arts Tiny Flags and Hero Arts Be Happy), card (white, kraft, yellow, orange, green, blue and pink), black ink, VersaMark, clear embossing powder, glossy accents, ProMarkers, Nestabilities (circles and inverted scalloped circles), sewing machine and threads.


I just want to say thanks a million to Hero Arts for their generosity and yet another release packed full of must haves. A great big thanks to you too for visiting and to my hosti sisters who are so much fun and so inspiring! Now it’s time for you to hop to your next stop where the sweet and very talented Arlene McClung awaits your visit.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Happy Birthday Bear

I had a birthday card to make and pulled out the cute new Lil Hoot set from Hero Arts for it - love all the adorable critters in this set!

IMGP2387

Stamps (Hero Arts) - Lil Hoot, Friendly Flags & Be Happy

I started by inking a panel of white card with faded jeans and tumbled glass distress inks and splashed some water on it. My good friend Linda sent me the gorgeous die cut tree trunks (thanks again, Linda!) and I applied some antique linen distress ink to them before adhering them to the card with foam pads. Scraps of green card were used for the background and grass. I embossed the flags and placed them on a piece of baker's twine which had been strung through the trees. It's hard to tell from the photo, but for some dimension, the big bear's head has been layered once and the little bear's head twice.

IMGP2400

I'm submitting this card into A Blog Named Hero's New Year, New Stash Challenge, Simon Says Stamp's Emboss It Challenge and Paper Crafts and Scrapbooking January Gallery Challenge.

Hope you're having a great weekend! We're enjoying a lovely sunny but cool day:)


Thursday, January 16, 2014

A Little Chocolate Makes Everything Better

I can’t believe it’s a little over three weeks since I last posted - I nearly had to dust the cobwebs away from the blog!

I was so excited the other morning when the A Little stamp set by Hero Arts arrived! Since then I've had a great time making little tags and cards using it. To say I'm smitten by this set would be an understatement! Besides using all the great sentiments that come with the set, it will also be fun to add other sentiments to the main image either using stamps I already have or sentiments from the pc.

IMGP2347

For this project I used the "chocolate" sentiment. I started by embossing the main image and added sentiment on brown and kraft card. To make the wrap for the chocolate bar, I embossed a piece of pool card, added punched scallops to the edges and adhered it to the cellophane wrapped bar. Then I adhered the chocolate panel to the wrap using foam pads. I'm submitting this project into the Simon Says Stamp Emboss It Challenge and the A Blog Named Hero New Year, New Stash Challenge.

I just want to let you know that the Hero Arts Hostess Blog Hop will start at the Hero Arts blog next Monday.


From Monday to Friday next week, the Hostesses will be showing projects made using new stamps from Hero Arts’ 2014 catalogue. Each day next week the hop will start at the Hero Arts blog. I know we are all having a brilliant time playing with the new stamps. I can't wait to go hopping with my Hosti friends next week and see what everyone has come up with! I hope you'll come along and join in on the hopping fun!

Now I'm off to test the theory on the bar of chocolate - I'm sure it must be right, but I better check just to make sure ;-)