Hero Arts Hostess Hop

Hello and welcome to the Hero Arts Hostess Hop, featuring fabulous stamps from the new 2015 release!

Hero Arts Stamps - Playful Animals, Lines Background, Butterfly and Flower Stamp & Cut and Write Your Message

If you’ve been following along, you’ve just arrived from Virginia's blog! I know Virginia will have shared fantastic creations with you - I can't wait to see them! If you find a broken link or didn't know about the hop, you'll find a master list of the hop links at the Hero Arts Club Blog. Also, please report broken links to: blog@heroarts.com.

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 have comment moderator switched on so don't worry if your comment doesn't appear immediately. Good luck:)

I’m so happy to be hopping along with my Hosti sisters to show you what we’ve made with products that Hero Arts generously sent us from the 2015 Spring Catalogue. I was delighted to receive the gorgeous stamp and die set with stitched detail - Butterfly and Flower Stamp & Cut. I just love stitching so the set was barely in the house before it was inked up! I decided to make a birthday card using the flowers and leaves from the set and a gorgeous new sentiment stamp Happy Birthday to You. Isn't the handwriting on the stamp just beautiful? It's by Kelly Rasmussen and you can find other wonderful new stamps with her handwriting here.

Hero Arts Stamps - Butterfly and Flower Stamp & Cut and Happy Birthday to You

As well as the stitching I love the cute button centres on the flowers.

After making the card I thought it might be nice to make a matching gift tag using the stem included in the set and making the flower in a slightly different way.

Hero Arts Stamps - Butterfly and Flower Stamp & Cut and Birthday Messages

I have to admit I’m often guilty of overlooking smaller images in sets (maybe my eyesight is getting worse!) but I wanted to ink up the cute ladybird image in the Butterfly and Flower Stamp & Cut set too. I decided to make wrapping paper using just plain parcel paper, the ladybird stamp and a hole punch. For the tag I again used the Happy Birthday to You stamp and omitted the lower part of the sentiment to leave space for the ladybird to nestle under the “birthday”.

Hero Arts Stamps - Butterfly and Flower Stamp & Cut and Happy Birthday to You

The cute cat image on my first card is from a fun set called Playful Animals which includes the cat, a mouse, hedgehog, fox, dog and pig. In addition, playful accessories for the animal are available - a fish bone, ball of yarn, cheese and dog bone, so cute! I know I’ll be pairing the yarn with the cat very soon but I couldn’t resist borrowing the yarn from the cat to make tags for items I’ve knit. I will cut the washing instructions from the yarn I’ve used and put it on the back of the tags.

Hero Arts Stamps - Yarn, Sew Artsy and Dolls

I love the cute images in the Playful Animals set and feel they will appeal to both children and adults alike. Also I think it would be a great set for children to stamp with as the animals are so easy to stamp and cut out. I opened my post with the cat from the set and now I'll finish with the sweet pig from the same set.

Hero Arts Stamps - Playful Animals, Thanks Stamp & Cut, Pinstripe Background, Be Happy and Clouds Background

Before you head off to your next stop along the hop I want to thank you for visiting, thank Hero Arts for yet another fabulous release and for their generosity, thank Deborah and Tami for all the work they do behind the scenes in organising the hop, thank my Hosti sisters for all the fun and inspiration they provide and last, but most definitely not least, thank my dear friend Linda for items she sent me for the hop.

Your next stop on the Hero Arts Hostess Blog Hop is Sue's blog. Sue is such a lovely and talented lady, I know she'll definitely have lots of inky goodness for us to enjoy! Now I'm off to have fun hopping too:)

Scramble Rainbows

I always enjoy the 90 minute Scrambles over at the Hero Arts Flickr Group and on Saturday had fun hosting one. The theme I went for was making any project using mainly neutral colours with dashes of at least three other colours. Over here you'll see all the amazing cards everyone came up during the scramble.

I made a couple of sample cards using the theme and time limit. For the first one I embossed the owls and thought bubble and cut out a window in the bubble.



Stamps (Hero Arts) - Lil Hoot & Write Your Message

Then I embossed the sentiment on a piece of white card, applied distress inks (barn door, spiced marmalade, mustard seed, mowed lawn and broken china) and placed it behind the speech bubble. If I had more time I probably would have added machine stitching but because I was in a hurry just added faux stitching with a white pen. To finish I added googly eyes - I have to start using up the collection I've accumulated over time!

I have lots of little scraps of white card left over from other projects so I decided to use some of these on my second card.



Stamps (Hero Arts) - Tiny Star Background & It's Your Day

I applied distress inks (barn door, spiced marmalade, mustard seed, mowed lawn, broken china and milled lavender) to some of these scraps and stamped the star background on them using the same inks. These pieces were placed behind circular windows I had die cut in a panel of card. Then I just stamped the sentiment and added die cut frames around the windows.

I'm submitting the second card into the rainbow of colour section of Hero Arts birthday challenge.

Merry Christmas

Here's wishing you a very Merry Christmas! I hope you all have a wonderful time celebrating Christmas with your family and friends and wish that all your dreams come true in the year ahead!



Stamps (Hero Arts) - Gingerbread Fun, Celebrate Everyday & Write Your Message

Lily Pad Cards’ First Birthday Blog Hop

Hi and welcome to the Lily Pad Cards’ First Birthday Blog Hop!



You should have arrived here from Karin’s blog. I’m so delighted to be celebrating the 1st Birthday of Lily Pad Cards and to be part of this Blog Hop – congratulations and thanks Deborah and Vicky!

There are three prize packages with a total retail value of over $300 to be won! These prizes will be awarded by random draw. To be eligible, you need to “like” Lily Pad Cards on Facebook. To increase your chances of winning, you can leave a comment on each of the blogs participating in this hop (including the Lily Pad). Your name is entered in the draw each time you comment on a blog (but only one comment per blog, please). To be in with a chance to win one of these wonderful prizes, comments should be left by 12:00 p.m. EST on Sunday, April 8. Good luck!


The Dream Team!

Well for my cards today, I wanted to use colours inspired by lily pads and a certain fabulous frog – yes Frederick duPonde you know that’s you, and honestly, George Clooney isn’t a patch on you! In honour of the equally fabulous Vicky and Deborah, I also made sure I included the colours of the Greek and U.S. flags.

So below is my first card.



Supplies: Hero Arts Stamps (Friends Definition, Wild Flowers and Birthday Messages), faded jeans distress ink, VersaMark, white embossing powder, card (cream & navy), upholstery fabric, baker’s twine and gems.

Of course I had to make a card especially for Frederick....



...and here it is



Supplies: Hero Arts Stamps (Froggy, Be Happy, Write Your Message,Friendly Flags and Heart Owls), card (white, blue, green & red), inks (black, green & blue), Happy Birthday embossing folder, blue ProMarker, Glossy Accents, white pen, baker’s twine and gems.

Since it’s a day of celebration, I have some brownies and baklava at the ready and am now ready to enjoy lots of hopping! The next stop on the hop is Lidiya’s blog. If you hit a bad link, you can always go back to Lily Pad. to view the master list of blog links. Please report any bad links to aris@inlinkz.com. Thanks for visiting and have fun hopping:)

Hero Arts' Virtual Cardmaking Party

Over the weekend Hero Arts held a Virtual Cardmaking Party in celebration of Operation Write Home’s birthday. There were lots of great challenges and fun games to take part in. Amazingly, over 600 cards were created by members of the HA Flickr group during the weekend to donate to Operation Write Home. These are the cards I made over the weekend.


Stamps (Hero Arts) Froggy, Clouds Background, Write Your Message and Flourish Background.



Stamp (Hero Arts) Birthday Messages.



Stamps (Hero Arts) Froggy & You’re the Best.



Stamps (Hero Arts) Heart Owls, Flourish Background & Branch Background.



Stamps (Hero Arts) Antique Engravings & Birthday Messages.

A big thanks to Hero Arts and everyone in the HA Flickr group for making it such a brilliant, fun weekend!



As you can see I had fun getting inky!

Strawberries

I knitted this hat for Tanya who I think likes strawberries, well I know she likes strawberry hats anyway! It’s from a pattern which can be found here.


When I’m using different balls of wool on the same row, I prefer to weave the wool that I’m carrying across into each and every stitch at the back. It’s a bit more time consuming but I think it reduces the chances of puckering and gives a tidier finish on the inside.


This is the card I made to send with the hat. As I don’t have any strawberry paper or stamps, I used some strawberry fabric for the background. The sky was made by lightly applying broken china distress ink to white card and spritzing with water. I coloured the girl with markers and made her a little pair of knitting needles using pieces of cocktail sticks with beads attached to the tops. Then I rolled some darning yarn into a ball and knitted a couple of rows on the cocktail sticks.

Stamps (Hero Arts):- You’re the Best & Write Your Message

I'm submitting the card into the Card Style Fun and Cute Challenge at Moxie Fab World.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

I Donut Know.....

It's probably because it's Lisa's week on the Hero Arts blog but I seem to be in the mood for making fun cards at the moment. Yesterday I saw Lisa’s adorable French cupcake card again on her blog and had another laugh. So I decided to make another card using Mon’s cute templates.

I Donut Know....., originally uploaded by heather maria.

Stamps (Hero Arts):- Have a Donut, Clouds & Write Your Message.

I just coloured the donuts, added the moustache and berets, some stickles to the white sprinkles and googly eyes. The rest of the sentiment “what I would do without you” is on the inside of the card along with "mon amour".

At last, a blue sky!!



After a few days of endless rain I was delighted to get up this morning and see this. We've been listening to the music drifting over from Oxegen for the last couple of days and feeling so sorry for the soggy festival goers. At least it looks like they will get a good day today. I think Eminem is one of the acts playing tonight, so the music will be more than drifting over to us, if his last concert here is anything to go by!