Hero Hostess and Friends : )

I still can’t quite believe this is happening, but I have just become a Hero Hostess!! I’m so excited and feel honoured to have been invited to be a Hostess by Hero Arts. I would like to say a big thanks to Hero Arts, my absolute favourite company (as you can probably tell from my blog!), for everything so far and for what promises to be a fun three months ahead.

Hero Arts is such a generous company and I love the fantastic quality and amazing range of their images\products. Nearly everything I’ve learned about card making has been through the artists on the Hero Arts blog and the members of the Hero Arts Flickr group. As well as learning and enjoying the fun aspects of the blog and group, one of the brilliant and unexpected benefits for me in joining the group has been the wonderful friends I’ve made within the group. I know a lot of other great friendships have also been formed because of the group. My good friend Linda donned her apron yesterday and I’m so happy we’ll be sharing this great adventure together. I can’t wait till you “meet” the rest of the hostesses during the week – you’ll love them!


Stamps (Hero Arts) - Scattered Leaves, Antique Engravings, Clouds Background, Big and Small Flowers, Music Background, Tree Birds and Messages

Tami from Hero Arts gave us the great theme of friendship to work with for our cards for the blog this week. The blocks on my card represent some of the wonderful friends I’ve made in the group and have had great chats and laughs with. A detailed description of how I made the card can be found here on the Hero Arts website, but here is a brief description. I applied various distress inks (Shabby Shutters, Mustard Seed, Broken China, Spiced Marmalade, Dusty Concord, Faded Jeans and Barn Door) to panels of white card and spritzed some with water. Using the same inks I stamped the images on each panel, the exception being where I used white ink for the Music Background. The sentiment was embossed in white and the completed panels were then machine stitched to the card base.



To make the flowers I stamped a piece of red fabric and a piece of yellow fabric with the small flower from the Big and Small Flowers set. Then I put together three layers - a piece of unstamped fabric on the bottom, wadding in the middle and on the top the piece of stamped fabric face up. Using a tiny stitch setting on my sewing machine, I stitched all the layers together by stitching the outlines of the petals. The smaller details were hand stitched and I sewed some beads to the centre. Then I cut out the flowers trimming close to the stitched edge without cutting through the stitches.

Frayed Poinsettia

I’ve been following Jennifer McGuire’s brilliant Thinking Inking series on Two Peas in a Bucket and the challenge this week is to stamp or ink on different surfaces. I picked three fabrics for my different surfaces.


Stamps (Hero Arts) - Holly Flourish, Music Background, Scattered Leaves & Three Holiday Trees.

Firstly I used a cream upholstery sample for the background. I white embossed it with the Holly Flourish and applied some antique linen distressed ink. For the poinsettia I used two pieces of fabric – a scrap of patterned fabric for the bottom layer and a piece of plain red fabric stamped with the Music Background for the top layer. I stamped one of the leaves out of the Scattered Leaves set onto a cream fabric.



To make the flower and leaf I put two pieces of fabric together and machine stitched around the pattern using a very small zigzag stitch. Then I snipped as close as possible to the stitching without actually cutting into it. I wanted a fuzzy look on the flower\leaf so I just frayed the edges a bit with my nail. The dotty ribbon made me think of snowballs so I added that, some lace, gold beads, twine and a red gem to finish.

Hope you all have a great weekend!