A Blog Named Hero

The official Hero Arts challenge blog!

Archives for April 2014

So long, farewell,auf wiedersehen, good bye!

     The time has come for my final day here at A Blog Named Hero; which was a home to me, not only because it was an outlet for my craftiness, but because the awesome ladies that run this machine: Linda Trace and Mary Dawn Quiridongo, you have been so kind and supportive, all the ladies from the DT, I have loved sharing and getting to know your beautiful hearts, and finally all the readers (special mention to Barb) who let me some comments that lifted my spirit and who support this blog, it was a beautiful ride for me to hop on all your blogs and watch all the beautiful cards you made to participate in the challenges.
      I will miss you all with all my heart, because, as life has been getting so difficult around here, you all have been a beacon whose light have made me feel so much better, may God bless you all!!!
      Now let´s get to the cards, this month Frecled Fawn was generous enough to send me embellishments to work with, so I made a different car for each kind of embellishment I received, thanks a lot!

     Don’t forget to participate in the challenge:

      Where you can win this fabulous prize:

      Thank you all!!!

Using pre-made embellishments, or make your own!

I sometimes have difficulty using pre-made embellishments on my cards, unless I start with the embellishment and work from there. That’s what I did with all three of these cards, and although they each started out as a square white card and a die cut square white panel, they turned out quite different to each other!

I made this card first, by pulling out a wood chip pin from Freckled Fawn’s November embellishment kit  and trying to decide what to do with it.  The first thing I did was pull the pin part off the wood chip – not because I didn’t like it, but because I didn’t want to stab myself by accident!  I then pulled out some Hero Arts stamps to see what would go well with the wood chip piece – and this cute little elephant seemed to fit the bill:

I coloured the elephant using Copic markers.  I thought this would make a cute baby card!

For my second card, I took a premade embellishment and pulled it to pieces to make my own!

 I used two stamps from the Hero Arts “Sky’s the Limit” stamp set, but I extended the solid and dotted lines coming from the star, in order to make them into a rainbow.  I then coloured it with a Stampin’ Up blender pen and 6 different Hero Arts Shadow Inks.  I swiped the rainbow with my Wink of Stella pen, and added some little glittery stars all over with my Sakura Gelly Roll pen.  I then took a Sequin Bow from Freckled Fawn’s Octobe 2013 kit, and I pulled it to pieces to use the gold sequins on the stamped star (I thought they looked like gold coins, which is what you find at the end of the rainbow, right?)

 For my third card, I didn’t go quite so CAS, but I could easily have made this more CASified simply by not stamping the Flower Dot Pattern background stamp on the card base. 

The starting point for this card is the butterfly I hand-made using some paper from Gossamer Blue’s March kit (the paper is Webster’s Pages “Sprinkled with Love”: Secret Admirer).  Next time I make one of these butterflies, I will use a thinner patterned paper – it was a bit difficult to fold.  (You’d think I would have learned my lesson after all the paper folding I did in my Christmas project here at ABNH, but obviously I’d forgotten!)  If you’d like to make one of these butterflies, check out this You Tube video tutorial by Susanlhl. 

I added a sentiment from Hero Arts, some little gold and pink sequins, and some printed cork shapes from Freckled Fawn’s November 2013 kit.

http://www.freckledfawn.com/

Thanks for visiting today – make sure you check out our latest challenge at A Blog Named Hero – it is all about using layers:

What are you going to make?

Thanks for visiting, and I hope you’re having a lovely Easter weekend 🙂

Supplies:

Three ways to be Right at Home with Freckled Fawn

Hello crafters!
Well we might as well get the sad/mushy/lovey dovey out of the way right from the get go.
This will be my last post with A Blog Named Hero. I cannot tell you how immensely I have enjoyed being on this team and sharing my crafts with you all. 
To my team: This group of women are some of the most supportive and kind hearted people I have ever known.  You all have really become my extended family and I will miss you a great deal. Thank you to Linda and Mary Dawn for giving me a chance two years ago you have no idea how you have inspired me. You’re just the best ever ladies. 
To the fans: Thank you so much for your outflowing love and support. Seeing your creations over the years has been some of my greatest joy. Each and every one of you is so talented. We all look for inspiration from each other and I was blessed that I could come here to the galleries you submitted and find it week after week. 
While I am sad to leave I’m so excited for the new design team members. They are such a creative group and I just know they will continue to fill this blog with new and wonderful designs. Good Luck girls, I can’t wait to see what you make 🙂 
End sadness here. There are cards to see right?!
As you know the fabulous people at Freckled Fawn have been gracious enough to let us share their goodies here. If you’ve never had a look see go check them out. Their stuff is delightful. 
For this post I used Hero Art’s Right at Home. It just seemed fitting since ABNH will always have a piece of my heart. I also made 4 cards instead of 3 . . .Some how a monochromatic snuck in there hehehe. Speaking of let’s start there. 
Pretty simple. I used the chisel end of my copic to draw some diagonal lines. I used that same copic to color a strip of white. That pretty sequin bow is from Freckled Fawn and really dresses this simple card up. 
I loved the cork house stickers Freckled Fawn sent us so I decided to make them the star of the card. I did color the hearts with copics and add some stickles but other than that these babies hold their own.
I didn’t want my card to be so open that the kite looked lost but I still wanted it to be clean so I just framed in the design with some colored strips of paper. Again, I colored white using my copics. The sentiment is a flag pin from Freckled Fawn. I just broke off the pin part and colored it black with distress ink. Sorry about the angle the sentiment says “So Much Fun”
Last (ahhh last 🙁  ) I stamped the house from the set but I masked off the details. I felt it would be too cluttered. The sentiment was colored in copics and adhered over another Freckled Fawn flag. I couldn’t stop myself from adding stickles to this one. Look at that glitter baby!
Okay loves that’s it for me! Don’t forget to play along with our current challenge
You could win a wonderful prize
Who wouldn’t want that?!  Big hugs to all of you! Thanks for a wonderful two years
XoXo

Floral Birthday Card

Hello! It’s Lisa here, with a simple, yet luscious, card I made for my mother’s upcoming birthday. I have always loved this bold and whimsical flower from the Layered Flowers stamp set from Hero Arts. It’s a bit tougher to find these days, but I’ve included links to some newer stamp sets from Hero Arts that would work just as well. 
I stamped the focal image just twice. And had it run off the card, there’s something very organic about that that appeals to me. Colored the images with some Distress Markers. Easy, and fantastic color choices.

Then I used a clear Wink of Stella to go over the inner petals. I wasn’t really hooked on this pen the first time I used it. The second time sold me. It really is the perfect amount of shimmer, in an easy, no mess applicator. Go, buy one. I’ll wait for you to come back. 🙂

Then I used an amazing stencil from Simon Says Stamp. I borrowed this from a friend, but will now have to acquire my own. I can see myself using this a lot. It’s called Falling Snow, and it’s just spectacular. Here’s where I fell in love with yet another new product that I didn’t think I was going to need. I was wrong. Delicata Gold ink. Holy wow. It is perfect. It’s a rich, dark gold. Not too bright, and just lovely. I would recommend buying the refill when you buy the ink pad. You’re going to be using this ink a lot more than you think you are. Trust me. 

Just look at that lovely gold there. I think the stenciling added just the right touch to finish off the card. I was very pleased with the final result. Clean and simple, but also very elegant.

On the inside, I used this fantastic stamp from Simon Says Stamp, which is part of their Happy Every Day stamp set. Fills the inside of the card nicely, and I love the mix of fonts. 
Please make sure to check out our latest challenge. 
Where you can win a:
And if you just need to do some shopping, please do yourself a favor and check out Simon Says Stamp. Great selection, amazing people, and awesome customer service. I love shopping there. 

Challenge #42: Layer Cake

Welcome to our 42nd challenge! We’d like you to use layers or dimension on your new card or project and link directly to your blog post or gallery entry in the linky thingy below. 
As always, our generous sponsor, Simon Says Stamp, will award one random entry with a $25 gift voucher.

And we’re using Freckled Fawn on all of our projects for April, so you’ll see some Freckled Fawn goodies in addition to Hero Arts!

Our design team has some beautiful samples to inspire you:

Leslie Hanna
Sindhura

Linda

Teresa + Video on her blog

Sarah

Cristina Martinez

Thanks so much for participating in our challenges – we couldn’t do it without you!

Leslie’s supplies:

Sindhura’s supplies:

Linda’s supplies:

Teresa’s supplies:

Sarah’s supplies:

Chris’ supplies: