A Blog Named Hero

The official Hero Arts challenge blog!

Archives for July 2013

Tiny images make lovely wreaths

Hello crafters! This post is dedicated to wreaths and tiny images from clear sets. There is something about wreaths that I just love. Since I only have holiday wreath stamps in my stash, I decided to use tiny images from different clear sets to make my own floral wreath.

For the first card, I draw a circle with a pencil and then I stamped flowers and leaves around. I finished the wreath with my favourite banner die from Simon Says Stamp.

Here is the photo showing which images I used – sorry for the poor quality.

For the second card I cut a `wreath` with two circle dies and then stamped the tiny flower from the Homey Patterns set in three colors. I also wanted to finish this one with a banner, but nothing seemed to fit. Then I tried this hand cut `split` banner and I was finaly happy!

Let me remind you, that you can still play along with our current challenge. One lucky winner will recieve a $25 gift certificate from our generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp!

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies used to make the first card:

Supplies used to make the second card:

Dauber fun!

Hi everyone, it’s Christine with lots of color!

I really enjoy creating backgrounds – So I’ll show you 2 step-by-step tutorials to get fun and colorful backgrounds for your cards with daubers. I have some distress stain daubers – but I guess the Hero Arts daubers work just as well. I’d be glad if someone tried them out with the following techniques and let me know 😉

1) The glossy-watercolor-technique
What you need:
– Glossy photo-paper
– some daubers (different colors)
– stamps
– black ink

1) smear color on the glossy paper to cover the whole background:
2) Powerfully dab the daubers on the paper to add lots of color:
3) Lift the paper and move it to make the ink move around until you like it:
4) Let it dry (be careful if you use a heat tool – the glossy paper doesn’t like it too much) and cut it to the shape that you’d like to use:
5) Stamp your image with black ink and add some color with a back marker if necesssary:

I decided to use a white card base and added a sentiment from “my words”. I embossed the circle and cut it out. “Art” is directly stamped onto the background.

I LOVE that effect!

The second technique is something I use quite often. I learned this from a super talented friend. I often got asked how I do this, so I thought I’ll show you:
What you need:
– Embossing Ink
– White embossing powder
– a background stamp
– different daubers
– white cardstock
1) Emboss your background with white embossing powder on white cardstock:

 2) Powerfully dab the daubers onto the paper. The embossing will resist the ink.

3) Go on like that until you like what you see 🙂

 That’s it! Easy, eh?

I added some colored cardstock underneath that background, a sentiment and some wood veneer – ready! This looks like fun!

I hope you had some fun and got inspired to take out your daubers and play! If you try this out with the HA-Daubers – please leave a link in the comments – I’d love to see what you come up with!
And don’t forget to play along in our current challenge….inspired by a Hero Artist. You still have some days to enter and be eligible for this:

Watercolor 3 ways

Hey everyone it’s Michelle here today with 3 different watercolor mediums. I have been obsessed lately with watercolors. I have 3 different mediums in my stash, watercolor paints, watercolor pencils and watercolor markers and decided to try to see how different each one was.
In the end I realized other than the application process it all comes out pretty much the same. Let’s take a  look shall we?
For all three cards I used the same format. I stamped the flower onto watercolor paper in Colorbox Frost white and then embossed with Hero Arts White embossing powder.
First up is the one most of us are familiar with…Watercolor paints.  We all used them in school you add a little bit of water to your brush, dip in the shiny palette and watch magic happen. 

For this card I chose 3 different purples, a deep blue and a touch of pink.  I used a waterbrush to try and control the amount of water that went on.  While I love the blending with the paint I find that the control is harder.  I either picked up too much paint, had too much water and it took me a long time to get the look I was going for.   I hand drew the stem on each flower and used a Hero Arts leave with the medium for that card.  Watercolor paint on an acrylic stamp works a whole lot better than I thought it would. 😉 When I was done I put some purples and blues on a toothbrush and splattered it.

Next up is watercolor pencils:

This is by far my favorite way to used watercolor. There is so much control and many different ways of doing it. I like that I have lots of options. With watercolor pencils you can color directly onto your image like I did here to start, then as you start to add other colors you can put your waterbrush directly to the pencil and pick up color.  Lastly for the tinge of orange on this one I scribbled a little bit of orange onto my glass surface of my desk and then spritzed it lightly with water to dull the color down a bit. Options! 😉

For the background on this one I mixed up some Hero Arts daubers and inks on my glasstop, spritzed with water and flicked on with the toothbrush again.

Lastly we have watercolor markers. I used the ones by Tombow.  I just recently picked these up.  I like that I have options with these too but too heavy a coat and your paper will pill. I really like layers and got frustrated at first but now that I have played I have a better understanding of how they work.

With this card I colored directly onto the paper and then blended with the waterbrush. To get some of that lighter blue I again scribbled onto my glasstop and then lightly spritzed with water.  The key to using these markers is a dryer brush. It’s better to have an empty waterbrush or learn not to squeeze it, and pick up water from the side instead. This will greatly cut down on your paper pilling.

The splattered background was created using HA daubers on a toothbrush.

I hope you give one or all of these mediums a try. It’s really, really fun! 🙂

Please don’t forget our challenge….inspired by a Hero Artist. You still have time to enter and be eligible for this:

Supplies used:

Paper strips/scraps are My Minds Eye ( blue flower), Basic Grey ( Pink Flower), Bo-Bunny Double dot ( purple flower)

Mission Ignition #5 Twine Technique

For my very last Mission Ignition, I thought I would make a video showing how the twine technique I used to make the below card (some of you asked about it and I couldn’t go without doing it):

And here are some other examples using this technique with other card designs. 

           this card uses THIS IS BIG and JAPANESE DOLLS stamp sets with some Basic Grey Konnichiwa banners.

using THIS IS BIG stamp set by HERO ARTS
I want to thank Mary Dawn and Linda for a great term. The entire design team has been so nice to me. I had so much fun exploring color with you all….and using HERO ARTS products 🙂

Got Shapes?

 Hi friends of Craftyland!

I decided to dust my basic dies and make cards with them: sometimes we forget to use something because out of sight, out of mind right?  So for me it’s a new adventure each time I rearrange my supplies and tools. Because I fall in love with them all over again! I hope I inspire you to take a trip into your drawers or containers and uncover a forgotten treasure, like I did!

     I also love, love patterned paper so I decided to use a lot of it, and use stamps for greetings only.  I am not for a minute putting my stamps six feet under, I still adore them, but once in a while is nice to change your style and try something new or retry something old, wouldn’t you agree?

     Well I will stop my blabbering and get to it, here are my shaped cards, simple but cute. if I may say so, I think they are quite easy to replicate so you can do an entire set in one seating, and they are small so you can use them as tags also!





Have a great week!