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Lifestyle Dies: A Pithy Obsession

July 7, 2021

Hello Crafty Friends!

This month our challenge is all about repetition–and that’s one of my favorite things for cardmaking.

Taking a simple image and using it over and over can be a great way to stretch your stamps and dies and make something unexpected. And for today’s card, I did just that, using just one tiny die, one equally tiny stamp, and one detail that is totally, uniquely me.

This card started with my obsession with the hat die, which is part of the Hero Lifestyle Picnic Day set. I obsessed over it because I had somehow started thinking of it as a pith helmet, although I really think it is intended to be a straw sun hat.

I ink blended my summer version of a rainbow on my die cut pith helmets, using my new Hero Hues reactive inks in Taffy, Lemon Drop, Pool Party, and Blue Hawaii (those names just sound like summer, don’t they?) and lined them up carefully on white 4 X 5.25 card stock.

And then I got stuck, which happens to me sometimes. I needed heads for the helmets–but cutting the heads off a dozen Lifestyle people dies, seemed pretty barbaric. Creatively blocked, I just stared down at my hands! Problem solved: I used one of my fingerprints to “stamp” the heads! And now the card is totally, uniquely me.

The heads needed faces–so I just picked a happy one from the Hero Lifestyle Faces stamp set. This little face is soooo tiny, I was sure I’d lose it on my craft desk (I am NOT a neat crafter); somehow I managed to not lose it (or smudge the card.) I popped up those pith helmets on the head at suitably jaunty angles using foam dots, and then all I needed was a sentiment.

I wanted something that went with my pith helmet obsession and I was stuck…again. Ugh. Fortunately, I was zoom crafting with my friends, including the oh-so-lovely-and-clever Michelle Lupton. Took her about 30 seconds to suggest a just perfect sentiment from the My Monthly Hero kit for March 2021.* She’s a genius. And so: Adventure is at your fingertips! (I love a good pun!!)

I hope you enjoyed my card with the one dozen explorers wearing rainbow-hued pith helmets. They are ready for some summertime fun, and so am I!

Now it’s your turn! Show us how you repeat yourself by entering our challenge with a creation of your own, which will also give you a chance to win one of our two prizes from our sponsor, Hero Arts. Can’t wait to see what you create!

Thanks for stopping by,

* The March 2021 My Monthly Hero kit is sold out. However, the Fly High Animals stamp set has a couple of great adventure-themed sentiments that would work well).

Monochrome Croaker

June 6, 2021

Hello Crafty Friends,

I’m really enjoying our monochrome challenge! Sticking to a restricted color palette gives me a chance to concentrate on other aspects of the card. Today’s card is a scene of a friendly frog doing yoga on his water lily.

My color palette is “pond” and I’ve carried that color to a logical conclusion. By using a gel press background of acrylic paints framed with stacked oval frames, there is the suggestion of an actual pond. I think there’s a little bit of Monet in that pond, do you see it, too?

The yoga-loving frog is seated smack dab in the middle of a white water lily (or lotus, if your prefer). The flower and frog let me dust off my Copic markers — which have not seen much action this year. After masking the lily to create a single image of the lily and its leaves, I colored the image in blues and greens. Using very, very light blues and greens on the flower gave it depth while making sure it still appeared white. Coloring the frog more green than blue made him pop, and dotting in the frog’s shading was fun. If you look closely, you can see the glossy shine I’ve added to Mr. Frog’s eyelids. I popped up the flower with foam dots and popped up the frog with a little more foam. I heat embossed Breathe In, Breathe Out from Zen Messages, which is one of my very favorite sentiment sets.

And then…I left well enough alone. Plenty of depth, texture, an interesting background, and a tiny bit of shine. That’s the card, I hope you like it.

Play along with our monochrome challenge this month for the chance to win one of our prizes, generously supplied by our sponsor, Hero Arts. I can’t wait to see what you make!

Thanks for stopping by,

Embossing 4 Ways

July 21, 2020

This month’s challenge is Embossing and I have to say that it is by far one of my most favorite things to do in cardmaking, it is just magical the way that embossing powder melts to give you a shiny, raised sentiment, pattern or element to color. This set of cards uses Embossing all of those ways and also adds another which most people do not obviously go to but I will also show you some examples of detail embossing.

For these cards, I used two older Hero Arts woodblock background stamps that are so flexible I have used them both over and over, combined with white die-cut backgrounds and the Togetherness Flower Bouquet stamp set and sentiments from one of the first My Monthly Hero Kits that I thought went well with this combo. These projects really show how much fun it is to collect things you like and mix them up with your other favorites. The formula for all these cards was One large floral + stamped and embossed background +Wide layered sentiment strip. I like to make multiples of cards and my process starts with making all of the parts to mix and match, so first I stamped two charcoal grey and two pink backgrounds and 3 bouquets and die cut a couple of panels of the white background die. I also pulled out different sentiments and made matching cardstock strips as well.

For the two cards above I watercolored the Flowers with some Hero Hues Inks and a waterbrush. The top one with the gold embossing I kept the bouquet whole but for the bottom one I cut off the bottom flowers off of it and another for another card shown below. On the other pink card with the bouquet embossed in white on the background I also used selective embossing, where I used an embossing pen and colored over parts of the petals and used white satin pearl embossing powder to them. You can use detail embossing to add gold accents or highlights or give a more continuous look to differently colored items such as the two cards below.

Using the bouquest as a simple background in white embossing makes pulls the bouquet together on the panel.

Here I also usesd White Satin Pearl embossing powder on the petals of the flowers as well as the background. It is hard to see but it looks so pretty and pearly in the light.

So let’s count the embossing ways… 1- Embossing a flower or other for containing your water-coloring, 2- Embossing a background with clear embossing powder for a subtle pattern, 3-Embossing a dark color background with white ink and clear embossing powder and 4- detail embossing using an embossing pen to add selective details to small areas of your cards. with background.

I hope you like these cards and that they gave you some inspiration for other ways to add embossing to your cards. Make sure you join in the challenge. You have until 5pm EST on the 10th of August to enter the challenge via the link tool below!

We can’t wait to see what you create.

Lee Ann

Nature in Winter

October 21, 2019

Oh my goodness Fall is just flying by and it is almost time to start making my holiday cards, so for our Nature theme this month I started getting out all of my Hero Holiday Stamps! It is always fun to “shop” your stash and re-visit an old favorite set. For the card below I used the Winter Time Fun set and did some simple masking to create the scene. To start I Die cut the wreath from some white cardstock and stamped the fox and the tree from the set, then cut some simple masks from post it tape to cover them as well as a curved piece to stick on top to create the snowbank.

Then I ink blended the night sky with splash ink very lightly using clarity stencil brushes and then more heavily using Blue Hawaii and then Grape Slush and let it dry thoroughly. I removed the masks and colored Mr. Fox and the tree with Copics and prismacolor pencils on top and added some detail with a micron pan. Finally I white heat embossed the sentiment from the set on a piece of lapis cardstock and some snowflakes on my colored panel. I carefully glued the wreath back on top of the circle and foam mounted it to the card and added some white details with a gel pen and crytal stickles for a little snowy sparkle.

Take a look at this set as it has alot of really sweet little wintry items for your Holiday cards. Dont forget to join us for the Nature challenge. Link Up for the giveaway is here.> Product Links are below too.

Happy Crafting,

A Little Floral Sympathy

June 21, 2019

Hi, everyone, it’s Lee Ann here. I hope you have had a great week and are ready to spend some time cardmaking this weekend Today I’m sharing another Sympathy card featuring some of the stamps from the Hero Arts Vault along with a great technique using the new Reactive Inks from Hero Arts. These are a hybrid sort of like the Distress Oxides but they do not oxidize so you get creamy watercolor looks but more transparent color.

I wanted to make this one very soft and light feeling so I arranged all of the little flowers stamps from the Little Florals set on some white Tim Holtz watercolor paper and embossed them with white embossing powder as well. leaving room for the sentiment in the bottom third. After the embossing had cooled I pressed some ink directly from the pad onto my glass media mat and very roughly started picking up the colors and painted with the rule of three’s and a visual triangle around my sentiment in mind.

I used the new reactive inks, in Taffy, Lemon Drop, Creamsicle, Blue Rasberry, Splash and Grape Slush, sort of painting into the areas for specific flowers but not being precise at all. This is very easy and simple and will turn out great as long as you keep the orange, red and green separate, the rest will mix beautifully. Do not worry about doing this perfectly it is supposed to have an artistic layered look, ethereal and floaty. Definitely not within the lines!

When my piece had dried I colored in all of the flowers with a Versamark pen and then added clear embossing powder over the top. After that was smooth and melted and had cooled I took the white Sea Salt Ink and pressed it on the card and dragged it all over, I wanted to damp down the background to almost white and get it to look almost painted. I then took a baby wipe and cleaned off all of the flowers where the clear embossing powder was and the brighter watercolor revealed itself.

This is a great technique called Joseph’s Coat, you are simply masking off the color underneath with clear embossing powder and then re-inking the background, so that there is a difference between what is embossed and not. This can be very dramatic with a dark ink over light or bright colors or soft and sweet with a white or lightened background with softer colors showing through as it is here.

After the panel had dried I ran it through my die-cutting machine to flatten it and added some craft foam to the back so it would just be slightly raised off of the card. I heat embossed the Thinking of you sentiment from the “Messages with a Flourish” set on a piece of light blue vellum that matched the inky water coloring in silver embossing powder. I wrapped this around the panel to hold it in place with no adhesive and then adhered the panel to a card base of Hero Arts Wood Grain cardstock from one of the MMH Kits.

I hope you like this technique and give it a try. Don’t forget to enter your card in the June challenge, there are a couple of Hero Arts Gift cards for prizes! Click here for all the details.

Thanks so much for stopping by, More details on my blog if you are interested!