A Blog Named Hero

The official Hero Arts challenge blog!

Challenge: Clean & Simple, Part Two

CAS with Jane's Doodles

Good morning. Today we get to show you some inspiration from the remaining designers from our team. We are really having such a great time with Jane’s Doodles this month. I can not recommend her products enough. I think they’re delightful, and really high quality. Stamp perfectly the first time, which speaks to my heart!

You can click on the picture to go to the designer’s blog for more details.

 

 

 

 

And now we’re challenging you to go Clean and Simple for the February challenge!  One random entry will win a prize from our February collaborating company, Jane’s Doodles!  Don’t forget to mention what’s new to you in your project and you can find the rest of the challenge rules here if you need a refresher!

The challenge ends at 11:59PM EST on February 27th and the winner will be announced the next day!  Please add your card using the linky tool below.  We can’t wait to see what you create! Please make sure to read our Challenge Rules.

 

Lisa’s Supplies:

Michelle’s Supplies:

Donna’s Supplies:

Kelly’s Supplies:

Coralynn’s Supplies:

Special Delivery Tags

Hi there! Lisa here, with my fun project using this month’s collaboration partner, Jane’s Doodles. Have you seen their products? Eek. I want to snuggle all of the critters. Seriously. Their expressions just kill me. I want them all. 🙂

Since our challenge theme this month is Clean and Simple, which is right up my alley, I pulled out some paint swatches I’d been saving for just this sort of thing.

I used the Hero Arts infinity tag dies to cut the paint swatches into tags, and made sure to cut two reinforcements as well. For the backs of the tags I cut some remnants from watercolor paper that I had laying around.

I stamped the ridiculously cute bear and bunny twice onto some Bristol paper. I wanted to use my Zig clean color markers and knew that this paper would work best. I stamped them twice thinking I might mess up the coloring, and wanted to be prepared. The coloring went as planned, ha, so I got to make four tags instead of the two that I had planned. Love when that happens.

After coloring the critters, I fussy cut them out and then applied versamark over the entire image and used clear embossing powder to sort of give them more of an embellishment feel and look. Then I stamped the Special Delivery stamp onto a strip of vellum with versafine, and clear embossed it so it would stay. I adhered the critters to the vellum and then used foam tape underneath the critter to adhere the entire piece onto the front of the tag. A few sequins and gems, the reinforcement, and some twine, and these tags are finished.

Here’s the back of the tag, where I used two different Hero Arts sets to get my point across. The To and From are from a holiday wreath set and they are my “go to” for tag sentiments. I just love them. So much, that if I kept them on a small block somewhere, that would not be a bad idea. I also used another Hero Arts set for the bottom image, the Made with Love. These tags will go onto crocheted baby blankets, so I think that sentiment is perfect.

Now, here’s the part where I tell you what to do, vs. what I did. See that little bear on the right? How his ears aren’t very smooth? Well… I am aging. We all are, I know. Yet my eyes appear to be aging at an advanced rate these days. I actually had to take my glasses off to fussy cut the rest of the animals. Ahem. So, make sure you can see properly while fussy cutting. The animals will thank you.

Also, here you can see how they are a bit shiny from the clear embossing treatment.

Please make sure to join us with this month’s challenge. It’s definitely a fun one.

CAS with Jane's Doodles


Challenge: New to Me, Part Two

Good morning! Today we are featuring inspiration from the “other half” of our design team. Make sure to click on the picture to visit the designer’s blog for more project details!

 

 

 

 

And now we’re challenging you to try something new to you for the January challenge!  One random entry will win a prize from our January collaborating company, Right at Home stamps!  Don’t forget to mention what’s new to you in your project and you can find the rest of the challenge rules here if you need a refresher!

The challenge ends at 11:59PM EST on the fourth Wednesday of the month (January 25th) and the winner will be announced on the following Saturday!  Please add your card using the linky tool below.  We can’t wait to see what you create! Please make sure to read our Challenge Rules.

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Supplies:

Lisa’s Card:

Kelly’s Card:

Donna’s Card:

Coralynn’s Card:

A Cup of Tea Does Solve Everything

Happy Friday to you! I hope you have some exciting things planned for the weekend. Me? Crafting, cooking, reading. My typical weekend.

We are so excited about this month’s sponsor. Right at Home has such lovely stamps, and this was the first time I got to play with them. I am happy to report that they stamp wonderfully, and are amazing. Go, buy them all. This month’s challenge theme is “New to Me“, which was made easy for me since these stamps were new to me. And I used some new products as well.

I used the large cup/mug image from Cup of Joy and stamped a repeated pattern on some watercolor paper. Then I used two small circle stamps from the same set to fill in some areas of the background.

I colored the mugs very loosely with watercolor, and then used my “new to me” Finetec watercolors to add the gold to the circles. Wow. Do you own these paints? They’re mesmerizing. The coverage is amazing. I wanted to paint everything with them. Decided to save that for another project though, you’re welcome. 🙂

Colored in the background just a bit with some pale blue inks, and then white heat embossed the sentiment on some black card stock, just to keep it simple, and also added some sequins. I am trying so hard to be a sequin gal. I love them, when other people use them. I seem to be sequin challenged. Practice makes better, I hope.

I do hope you’ll join us on this challenge. I’m sure you’ve got something in your stash that needs to get used, justify its existence, if you will. And you could win a prize from Right at Home!


Introducing the 2017 Design Team: Lisa Stein and Jessica Frost-Ballas

Happy Monday to you! I hope you’re gearing up to have a nice relaxing week with your families and friends, and aren’t rushing around too much.

We have a couple of announcements to make regarding the blog.

The biggest one is that one of our founding Design Team members, and the co-owner of this blog, Linda Trace, has decided to step away from A Blog Named Hero and concentrate on some other fun endeavors. Now, don’t worry, she has an amazing family and three little girls that are very happy about this. More Mommy Time! And we are hoping that she will guest design for us once in a while. 🙂

Now, because Linda has left, Jessica has graciously offered to help run this blog. I am very excited about this. Jess and I share a love of not going to sleep at the proper time, so we can now both be up all night working on fun blog things. Ironically, because Linda is in Australia, and because I don’t sleep much, and am on the West Coast, it also worked out that we could spend all my night/her day working on fun blog things. So, yay for continued late night chats. Let’s all welcome Jess to the administrative side of A Blog Named Hero! “Hi Jess!”

Our third announcement might be obvious, depending upon how you are reading this post. We have moved our blog to WordPress! You might have noticed that we have a new web address here at A Blog Named Hero!  We’re in the process of moving our subscribers to the new blog but please update your bookmarks so you can easily find us.  We’ve also moved our archives to our new home so that you can still access all of our past inspiration.  And to go along with our new home: we’re hard at work behind the scenes to bring you a brand new look when we kick off our January challenge.  We can’t wait to show it to you!

Now, before Jess and I give you a little information about us, I wanted to mention a couple more things. For the next two weeks our 2017 Design Team will be introducing themselves here on the blog, so be sure to stop by and see who’s joining us. We are very excited about our new team. It should prove to be an amazing year. And make sure to join us in January when we start the year off right with a fun challenge.

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Hey there, I’m Lisa. I’ve been around A Blog Named Hero for a few years now, and absolutely love the friends I’ve made via our little crafty world. I’m currently living in Las Vegas, Nevada, but call Arizona home when we aren’t in Las Vegas. I’m married to a man that puts up with me, which is a neat thing. All he asks is that I keep him laughing, which I try to do. We are fortunate in that we get to travel quite a bit, yet we are both hankering for that to slow down so we can get a new puppy. I have been paper crafting since I was a child, I’ve always had a fondness for stationery and office supplies, and would gladly shop for school supplies for hours. You’ll find that I have a fondness for kraft paper, watercolor, heat embossing, and a clean and simple style. I look forward to seeing your entries into our challenges, and can’t wait to get started with our 2017 collaboration companies. I can assure you we’ve got some great partners lined up for next year!

Hi, I’m Jessica and I’m so excited to be returning to A Blog Named Hero for my third year and stepping up to help Lisa run the blog!  So, a little about me for those of you who don’t know me. I live in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia with my incredibly supportive husband, two senior shelties, a tortoiseshell cat, and a senior bunny.  I am a professional musician by day and a paper crafter by night (or really early morning)!  I enjoy creating cards for my friends and family and I can often be found coloring images or embossing a sentiment in-between lessons and gigs!  I love experimenting with new techniques and mediums and I usually can’t resist adding a little extra sparkle to all of my cards and projects! 😉  Being a part of this team has been one of the highlights of my crafting journey for the last three years and I hope to be a part of it for many years to come!

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by during this busy holiday season!  We hope you’ll continue to come back over the next two weeks to meet the new design team!

And to entice you just a little bit, we’ve got a $20 gift certificate to Hero Arts. Have you seen their new Valentine’s release? Definitely something you’ll want to check out. We will draw a random winner from comments on posts starting today, through the end of the Design Team introductions.

Have a great holiday season!

Lisa & Jess