A Blog Named Hero

The official Hero Arts challenge blog!

It’s Always a Good Idea (To Send a Little Love)

 

Hello Card Making Friends, old and new!

I’m Essie (@essiecards on Facebook, @escards on Instagram, and  www.essiemakescards.blogspot.com.)  I’m excited to bring you my first post as part of the 2021 Design Team for A Blog Named Hero!  As a long-time fan of Hero Arts, being part of this talented team is my crafty dream come to life.

I have two teenagers and a tolerant-of-my-hobby husband.  We live and work in the Mid-Atlantic portion of the United States and, at the moment, we are all looking hard for a pair of kittens to join our busy household. 

And that’s enough about me for now–let me share some cards with you!

For this month’s “Anything Goes” challenge, I made a set of four cards that send love.  Whether we send cards like this for the Valentine holiday last week or to simply tell friends and loved ones that we are thinking of them, brightening someone else’s mailbox with color and affection is always a good idea!

Below are two closeups of the most elaborate of these cards–a  silvery bow-tied, heat embossed vellum card that opens up to a  watercolored version of that same candy hearts peekaboo stamp.   I love the soft blurry depth this gives the vellum card front.

The interior watercolored panel also opens so that my handwritten message can be tucked away rather privately.  A love-shaped die cut gives a little hint at the interior bright pink sentiment  

But…I had more heat-embossed panels, so I made three more cards!

First, I used my favorite peekaboo die to make little window that fit around each of the candy hearts.  I shined up those candy hearts with a little glimmer and clear lacquer.  Each window  opens to reveal more hearts–in fact, that itty-bitty heart stamp was part of the love stamp and cut set I used in the first card.

Finally, to use up the last of my candy heart panels, I pulled out my January 2020 Hero Arts kit (which is coming back as permanent stock — check out page 29 of the 2021 spring catalogue!) I die cut the kit’s tiny envelope and flowers to quickly make two more cards.  

 

So, that was four cards in a crafty afternoon–one complicated, one peekaboo (love that peekaboo die!), and two that I call “easy hearts & flowers.”

I hope you enjoyed this post!  More new teammates will be posting here in the coming days, and we’ll be back every month to offer up a new challenge and some ideas you might try in your card making adventures.  

I hope you’ll play along with our Anything Goes Challenge this month.  I look forward to seeing your latest creations!

                                           Thanks so much for stopping by,

Elf on a Shelf!

Hello! Michelle here today to share a cute Christmas card, using goodies from Neat and Tangled and from Hero Arts.

I CASEd a card by made by Donna back in September – you can check out her card HERE.  I used the layout of her card, but overall, this is a very different card to hers!

I used the “Elfs and their shelf” set from Neat and Tangled, along with a sentiment from “Santa’s Wonderland”. I made the background using my favourite technique – white embossing a background stamp (in this case, Highline Ironwork Background from Hero Arts – sadly, discontinued) onto watercolour cardstock, then scribbling with some Zig markers and spraying with water.

I coloured the little elf with Copic markers, before fussy cutting her out, tracing around the edge with a black marker, and adhering her so she looks like she’s perching on the edge of the white card panel.

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Simon Says Stamp
Ellen Hutson
Hero Arts

Embossing with Wow Products!

Hello everyone!

I am here with A Blog Named Hero and we are collaborating with WOW this month!  WOW has many products, today I am featuring their embossing powders, embossing glitters  and foil.  I had so much fun using their products, I could not just make one card.  I have three here to share with you today.  Please stop by A Blog Named Hero’s blog tomorrow for more inspiration and a new challenge!

Here are my cards:

All my cards are A2 cards.  This card,  I am using Hero Arts “Drippy Lines Bold Print” background stamp.  I inked the stamp with WOW embossing pad and then embossed with WOW “Unicorn Magic”.  I also stamped the butterfly twice from the Hero Arts “Die and Stamp – Butterfly” and embossed it with the WOW “Unicorn Magic” then I colored the butterfly with Prismacolor Colored Pencils and added some clear Wink of Stella. I then stamped the Happy Birthday from the Hero Arts “Year Round Sentiments” with the WOW “Metallic Gold Rich” Super Fine embossing powder and adhered it to my card.  I finished my card off by adding some sequins.

My next card is one of my favorite stamps by Hero Art called “Leafy Vines”.  I again inked the stamp using the WOW embossing pad and added the WOW glitter embossing powder called “Princess Pink”.  I added the sentiment from the Hero Arts “Many Everyday Messages” stamp set and embossed it with WOW “Red Pearl”.  A clean and simple card, but elegant!  This card would be perfect for a wedding.

My last card, I am using the WOW “Bright Silver” Foil, this picture doesn’t show all the details of the beautiful foil.  I don’t own a laser printer, so I stamped the Hero Arts Leafy Vine stamp with black Archival Ink on some white cardstock and took the image to Staples and had them make a few copies on their laser copier (they didn’t charge me anything because I brought my own paper).  I then added the foil to the laser copy and ran it through my Laminator.  I added my sentiment from Hero Arts “Many Everyday Messages” stamp set.  I embossed it with the WOW “Opaque Seafoam White”.

I hope I have inspired you in some way to get those embossing materials out and have fun!  Thank you so much for stopping by, please come back again soon.

Please help support A Blog Named Hero by shopping through our links. These are affiliate links, at no additional cost to you. We appreciate your support.

Simon Says Stamp

Ellen Hutson

Hero Arts

Sending Sunshine

Hello! Michelle Lupton here today to share a fun card I made using some goodies from Studio Katia and Hero Arts.

I began with a piece of watercolour cardstock, onto which I stamped the Hero Arts fresh cut raindrops background stamp, and embossed with white embossing powder, but not over the entire piece – I left the bottom left empty.  (This stamp is unfortunately now discontinued, but the Rainy Day Bold Prints stamp would work just as well.)  I then added a little bit of Distress Ink in various blues, and sprayed the panel with water.

I then stamped the little girl with her umbrella from Studio Katia‘s “Hello Alice”  onto some white cardstock, fussy cut and coloured her with Copic markers, then added a spot of white to her eyes. I then decided she looked a little lonely all by herself, so I also stamped and coloured the cute little kitty in the set.

Before assembling the card, I coloured a strip on the left side of the card with the same Copic marker I used for her jeans. I cut the watercolour card down so that it was a smidgeon narrower than the card front, and adhered it down to show some of the blue stripe.  I used some grey Copics to make a shadow underneath the girl, before adhering her and her little cat to the card.  I then used my MISTI to stamp the sentiment from Hero Arts “Thoughtful Messages” (This is also discontinued, unfortunately, but Hero Arts has so many wonderful sentiment stamps, and there are lots of sentiments that would work equally well on this card). By the way, the Copic colours I used are B37, B45, C3, C5, C7, C9, E00, E02, E08, E53, R20, R22, R24, R29, YR14 and YR27.

If you’ve seen the challenge theme for this month, you would know that it is the finishing touches that I added to this card that make all the difference! I added some Wink of Stella to the umbrella and to the blue strip on the left. I added some Star Dust Stickles to some of the raindrops, and I added some of Studio Katia‘s fabulous clear rain drops.  These seriously look like drops of water on the card!

Have you entered our March challenge yet?

There’s a prize from Studio Katia to be won!

Thanks for visiting 🙂

 

 

 


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Oh Happy Day!

Hello everyone!

It’s Donna here to share with you my project using Hero Arts products and Jane Doodles stamp set “Party Time”.  I am so excited to be the first to tell you that we’re collaborating with Jane Doodles this month.  Our challenge will launch on Monday so be on the lookout for that!

Here is my project for today!

closer look of the image, do you see the glossy accents?

I don’t know about you, but I have lots of washi tape and I never seem to use it, except to hold down something on my big shot.  I needed something to use as the background so it would show through the Hero Arts Party Confetti Fancy Die.  I pulled out four colors of washi tape and lined them up on the front of my card.  Here is a pic…..

After I lined the washi tape on the front of my card, I trimmed the edges, here is what it looks like finished.

 I die cut the Hero Arts Party Confetti Fancy Die and adhered it to the front of my card with adhesive.  I stamped the sentiment from the Hero Arts “Oh Happy Day”  with versamark and used the Hero Arts White Embossing Powder and heat set it.  I then fuzzy cut the cake and presents from the Jane Doodles Stamp set “Party Time” and colored the images with copics.  I then added some glossy accents to  give the cake and presents some dimension.  I added them elements to my card with foam tape.   There you have it, a clean and simple card!

Thank you so much Jane Doodles for collaborating with A Blog Named Hero this month!  Thank you all for visiting.  Please come back again soon!