A Blog Named Hero

The official Hero Arts challenge blog!

Archives for June 2014

Let’s Go for a Ride!


This month we have had the wonderful pleasure of working with products from both Finding Nana and Faber-Castell Design Memory Craft. Very lucky ladies, we are. 
I made a very simple card to go along with our Bokeh challenge. 
I took the lovely Gold gelato and colored out a good amount on my craft sheet. Then I added water and mixed it until it was a pretty golden puddle of love. That I then used as ink, with a star from the Hero Arts Shoot for the Moon stamp set. If you look close, you can see the star shape on some of those “bokeh” effect images. 

I cut the circle out of the watercolor paper with the Hero Arts circle die, and mounted that card front to the Hero Arts Tide folded note card. Love having a stash of those note cards in stock. Makes it very easy to whip up a card, especially considering my trimmer blade decided to dull itself overnight. 
Used some foam tape underneath the flair badge. Just love that little bicycle and the yellow with the blue. I took my Wink of Stella pen and drew around the slightly embossed circle. That wasn’t quite enough for me, so I ended up using a “few” gems from Hero Arts to really make that circle sparkle. 
To make the sentiment banner I rubbed some of the gelato onto a piece of spare watercolor paper. Then I used my finger to smear it around. To smooth it out, I took a baby wipe and swiped it across the piece of watercolor paper. I let that dry overnight, and then stamped my sentiment in the morning. Cut it into a banner shape, a few pop dots, and that’s golden. See what I did there? 🙂
Please make sure to join in the fun of this challenge. Up for grabs is a gift voucher to Simon Says Stamp, whom we love and adore, and appreciate their sponsorship. 

Challenge #46: Bokeh


Welcome to our 46th challenge! We’d like you to make a new card or project using the Bokeh effect, and link directly to your blog post or gallery entry in the linky thing below. 
For those of you unfamiliar with the Bokeh effect, it’s a photography term, and it refers to the look of sparkles that appear in a photograph when part of the image is out of focus or if light reflects. Sometimes (like for me) it’s accidental, but the good photographers do it on purpose. 🙂 
Here are some images I picked up from Google Images to show you some examples:
They are all different!  There is a great video by Libby Hickson on the Hero Arts blog on how she created the Bokeh Effect. You can watch it here. 
As always, our generous sponsor, Simon Says Stamp, will award one random entry with a $25 gift voucher.

AND, this month we’re using products from Finding Nana and Faber-Castell Design Memory Craft on all of our projects!

There are so many ways to recreate the Bokeh effect, and our design team has some beautiful samples to share with you:

Teresa Pham

Linda Trace

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

Leslie’s card:

Sarah’s card:

Cristina’s card:

Sindhura’s card:

Teresa’s card:

Linda’s Layout:

Cards for Dads

Hi everyone!
It’s Cris here with a post full of masculine cards, as Father’s Day is just around the corner for some of you.
I decided to start with the DIY dad:

That handsaw cut file from Hero Arts for the Silhouette is perfect for this kind of card, and I decided to use silver foil paper ,from DCWV, for the blade. It’s SO shiny!! Love it!
For the background I used the Designer Woodgrain stamp, from Hero Arts also, and some brads. I added a piece of washi tape from Findingnana under the sentiment for contrast.
There’s so much dimension in this card:

For the next card, I decided to follow the watercolor trend:

The triangles are clear embossed on watercolor paper, and I used watercolor pencils from Faber-Castell Design Memory Craft. They are so easy to blend! The flair is from Findingnana, isn’t it cute?

And my final card, I guess it would be for the geeky dad:

I blended some distress inks over watercolor paper with the inking tool, and added some white splatters. After it dried completely, I white embossed the heart and colored some of the stars with a silver pen from Faber-Castell Design Memory Craft. 
For the sentiment, I used words from the same stamp set “Written in the Stars”. I love the font, so for the “YOU, DAD” I used some of the  other sentiments in the set, by masking the parts I didn’t need before inking. 

So that’s all from me. I just want to remind you that there’s still time to play along with our current challenge:

As always sponsored by the amazing Simon Says Stamp:

And this month we are collaborating with Findingnana and Faber-Castell Design Memory Craft, so go check them out if you haven’t already, because their products are so good 😉

Thanks for stopping by!

Video Tutorial: Treat Holders with Velcro Fasteners

Hi everyone!

Its Teresa here today with a video tutorial on how to make this cute treat holder! Since our latest challenge is to make anything but a card, I wanted to show you a little packaging idea this Father’s Day! This holder has a wide base perfect for larger treats such as this gusseted tea bag. I was thinking of giving away some tea for Father’s Day at work so I came up with this packaging idea for my co-workers.

I stamped the leaf image with white pigment ink and went over it again with a colored dye ink, slightly off centering the image, to give me a faux letter pressed look. It will probably look even more like letterpress if they were stamped closer together. The result is a really nice pop out of your image. This technique is great to use on darker card stocks. I colored the tag part with Faber-Castell‘s Aqaurelle pencils, which are great if you’re new to coloring because they are very blend-able and can also work without water.

I hand wrote the TEA because the stamp set only had the ‘Coffee’ 🙁 I added a Velcro fastener coin to my holder just for extra security. To finish, I added some Lawn Fawn trimmings that I tied into a bow at the front to secure everything together.

I hope this gave you some ideas and be sure to watch the video to see how I made these! Don’t forget to join our current challenge if you haven’t done so.

We also have a fun collaboration this month featuring Finding Nana and Faber-Castell Design Memory Craft! 

As always, our generous sponsor, Simon Says Stamp, will award one random entry with a $25 gift voucher.

Watch The Video Here:

HUGS,

From boys to men!

Hello!

Sarah here and if you have seen my previous solo posts here on A Blog Named Hero you will know that I love creating cards for the boys so Father’s Day provides the perfect opportunity to make some more!

We have some fab products to play with this month from Finding Nana and Faber Castell Design Memory Craft.

and
 
First up is a cute card featuring Hero Arts Lil Hoot:
I white embossed this gorgeous starry background from Hero Arts and then coloured with blue and black gelatos.  I love their rich, creamy colour and the way that they blend!  The cute owls and white embossed sentiment are from Hero Art’s Lil Hoot set which Sindhura showcased so beautifully the other day.
Next up is a fun card which is a bit more grown up:
I stamped the moustache from Hero Art’s Heyday Sentiments on grey cardstock and used one of the fab wire embellishments from Finding Nana.  These are so fun and add a great quirky element to the design. 
I loved the wire embellishments from Finding Nana so much that I made them the focal point of this card:
I often go with a blue and orange colour combo on male cards – I just think it looks zingy and fresh!  Don’t you just love those paper clip embellishments from Finding Nana? 
I was on a bit of a roll with these Father’s Day cards so have you got time for one more?
Black and gold always work well for male cards and this time I used a gorgeous gold gelato to create the shine on my stars.  The stars and sentiment are from Hero Arts Written in the Stars. 
There you have my selection of fathers day cards which range from cute to trendy and hopefully give you some ideas if you haven’t got yours made yet!
Before you go just a reminder to say there is still time to play along with our latest challenge to make anything else other than cards.
We are sponsored by the fab Simon Says Stamp:
  

Thanks for stopping by – see you again soon!