A Blog Named Hero

A challenge blog dedicated to our love of Hero Arts!

Archives for 2014

Christine’s Favorite of 2014 and a goodbye

Hello friends and Hero-lovers 🙂

This is a kind of sad post for me, as this means saying goodbye to A Blog Named Hero. I’ve been on this team for 2 years now, met super sweet Ladies, made friends here, got inspired and motivated to start my business and got so. much. wonderful. feedback.

I will totally miss this team and being part of it – it has always been challenging and a blast, but I know these girls will rock without me and I will enjoy watching them grow even further 😉

I would like to say a superbig thank you everyone who left lovely comments, who took the time to read my posts (and read THIS post 😉 ), who gave tipps and let me know my posts were helpful

You, the readers, are the most important people for a living, active blog like A Blog Named Hero and I appreciate your responses a lot! If you would like to keep in touch: I would love to see you visit my blog Kartenchaos  and maybe you’ll meet me here again, some time.

I would also like to say an enormous thank you to Linda and Mary Dawn, who (twice!) picked me for this team and who do/did an amazing job behind the scenes. The card I made today was not only inspired by my favorite post of 2014, but also by those two girls, who deserve my gratitude. Linda, Mary Dawn, this is especially for you!

Okay, before I need to wipe away some tears, let’s get to the post itself.
A Blog Named Hero had many inspiring, creative posts during the entire year of 2014, but there was one – so simple and beautiful, that I want to focus on today.

Maya created this super cute card during our Lawn Fawn collaboration in October and wrote about therapeutic coloring. Look at this stunner:

You can find Maya’s complete post HERE.
I love the repeated stamping to create a background that really catches the eye. The bold sentiment in the black strip of cardstock really pops without taking any attention away from the background. I knew I would have to CASE this card and today’s the day.

So here’s the card that I made:

Like Maya I used just a few colors that I repeated and added a bold sentiment. And yes, the coloring was pretty therapeutic 😉

Thanks for the wonderful time, that we spent together. I wish everyone a very merry Christmas and hope you have a wonderful 2015.
Thanks for having me.

Maya’s favourite of 2014

Today it’s my turn to show my favourite from the year and I had a lot of fun going through the old posts and trying to decide. I could pick many as my fav for different reasons but in the end I settled for this post by Michelle. I think it was so clever to do your own pattern on part of the paper and I am a sucker for pretty embossing resist techniques.

Making patterned paper with stamps

Hi, all, Michelle here! I love my collection of background stamps – there’s just so much you can do with them! With these three cards, I tried to make a patterned paper look by stamping and then adding ink in two different ways.
This month, we’re lucky enough to be playing with Winnie and Walter stamps, along with Hero Arts. I also used two stamp sets from My Favorite Things on this first card.
To make the patterned panel, I stamped and white embossed the Fresh Cut: Raindrops background stamp, then used my Tim Holtz spritzer tool with some Distress Markers (Tumbled Glass, Broken China and Peacock Feathers). I then lightly blended over the lot with the palest colour, which unified the background, and also removed spritzed colour from the embossing.

I liked the results of this technique so much, I made two more cards using the same technique!



This last one is a one layer card.

Aren’t those cards really pretty? I wanted to make my own version of Michelles cards and since it’s about one hour local time until Dec 24 when we celebrate christmas here in Sweden I wanted to do a Christmas card and take the opportunity to wish you all happy holidays!


Tanja’s Favourite from 2014

Hi stampers,

Tanja here. Today it’s my turn to disclose my favorite post from 2014.
It was difficult to decide – there were so much incredible projects to see.

Finally this is my favorite:
I’m addicted to Christine’s cards. And this one is just stunning:

 
*KLICK* to read the complete post and to see the making of video.

 
Now so here is my card. I also combined supplies of the same theme. But I did it a little different.
 

 
 
Thanks so much for visiting today AND for all your lovely comments to my posts the past few month.
I wish you all a merry christmas and only the best for the new year!
 

Michelle’s Favourite from 2014

Hi, all,
Michelle here!  Well, Christmas is almost upon us, and
it’s the time of year that we sit back and reflect on the year that has
been.  I’ve had a brilliant year with A Blog Named Hero, mainly because
of the wonderful designers I get to play with!  One of those designers
who has become a good friend of mine is Christine Drogt.  Here’s a post
she did in February this year (which happens to be my 2014 favourite). 

Hi everyone!
It’s Christine with a brand new video.

Do you like reading? I wish I had more time to read, but I can’t stop
crafting in my free time. 🙂 I still love bookmarks and they also make a
nice little gift for friends who love to read.  So I took out some Hero
Arts goodies and some of the awesome supplies from Elle’s Studio and
created a video on this bookmark:

Don’t you think this makes reading even more fun? So check out the video
so see the how-to (and also the beautiful back with paper from Elle’s
studio – so sorry I have no photo of that).





I
love to play with all kinds of watercolor to create ombre effects or
rainbows. Well, this is only a part of a rainbow, but it looks bright
and makes me smile. 

Michelle here again – please make sure you check out Christine’s original post HERE to see her video, and also her product list.

I decided that I wanted to CASE Christine’s bookmark to make a little gift I could send in the mail. Here’s what I made:

First,
I cut out the bookmark shape, and shaped the top with a Stampin’ Up
punch. I used the same stamp as Christine, Hero Arts/Basic Grey, “Flower
Dot Pattern”  (one of my favourites) with Versamark and white heat
embossed it using Hero Arts embossing powder. I then got out my Kuretake
watercolour palette and added some gorgeous colour in some of
Christine’s favourite shades (aqua and teal, and some blue as well).
After that was dry, I die cut the word “hello” from the bookmark, and
also from some white cardstock.  I then used my ATG gun to completely
cover an
identically cut piece of cardstock and stuck the watercoloured piece  to it (I used a heavy weight cardstock that
has a hammered texture).  Then it was a matter of sticking the white
die cut word into the space in the watercoloured card, and adding in the
teeny tiny bits of watercoloured die cut card into the h, the e and the
two ls. I added some coloured ribbon attached with a bow of white
twine, and it’s done!

Then I decided I liked this idea WAY too much to only make one, so I went a bit crazy……..

 And you know I love a rainbow!!!

 Supplies used:

Lisa’s Favorites of 2014

Happy Holidays!

Lisa here, and for this post, I was inspired by an ombrè card by our lovely Sarah. 

I
really liked the colors, the fade, and the circle theme. So, I took a
new favorite stamp of mine from Hero Arts, stamped it onto some linen
cloth, and decided to embroider over the image in different shades of
purple floss. 

To tie in the circles, enamel dots that Sarah used, I did a bit of embellishing with a metallic silver floss.
This
was lots of fun to make, I enjoy how it looks pretty bad until just as
you finish the ombrè effect. Then it is shockingly beautiful. 
I crocheted a small hanging loop from the same metallic floss, and used some Distress Paints to paint the embroidery hoop. 
Now it’s ready to give as a small gift, or even to hang on a wall. Can’t wait to find a new home for it. 
Please make sure that if you’re doing any last minute holiday shopping, for yourself, or someone else, to stop by our sponsor, Simon Says Stamp. We love them, their products, and especially their customer service. Go check them out.