I created this for the 52 Christmas Card Throwdown challenge this week – and gave me an excuse to christen this colour layering robin from Hero Arts.
Brown and red Christmas
Tag: Hero Arts
A whale of a time
I watched a mixed media video by Libby Hickson at Hero Arts on the weekend and learnt about creating texture with Hero Paste using rubber stamps. I decided to create this card to try it out, and I’m also using it for my Just Add Ink wildlife submission this week. The texture of the water is so fun!
Crop & Create Mar 2023 – Hero Arts
Libby Hickson did a great job with these card designs, especially knowing it wasn’t the stamp and die set intended for the class projects. I felt so sorry for Hero Arts that their suppliers couldn’t get them completed in time, but they did so well in supplying an alternative for us. And the projects were sure fun – I’ve also used the fence stamp set a couple of times already this year, so it’s definitely a hit with me!
Things I enjoyed:
- I loved doing lots of colouring in these ones – and learning some tips such as colouring the edges of the die cuts to match the background.
- I loved how versatile these stamps are – the cats especially appeal to me, being a cat lover, and I think it’s great that they’ve captured the cats’ personalities so well. I just love everything about this stamp set!
- I loved learning different techniques, such as the pop-up window card – learning new things is always something I’m happy about, so this class ticked all the boxes for me.
Crop & Create Fall 2022 – Hero Arts
Laura Bassen taught a really fun class using Hero Arts producs, using her trademark bright rainbow of colours. I really enjoyed this one, and the products are super fun for birthday celebrations.
Things I enjoyed:
- I love everything about these products – the sentiments, images, and the confetti stencil – and see these being used a lot.
- I really love the confetti card with the rainbow ink blended background – I love the way the confetti stencil uses the same ink colours to make a more cohesive background, such a great technique!
- It’s fun to see a single small element like the birthday candle being used to create a full strip of images, especially done in rainbow format like this one. Something I’ve done a lot of since doing this class, so it must’ve stuck in my brain for a change.
- Looking back at this photo my brain has already come up with a couple more card designs, so that in itself shows how wonderfully versatile it is!
Hero Arts mixed media
I joined the Hero Arts mixed media Facebook group, hoping to dip my toes into the mixed media creative world to learn something new and to see if I enjoyed the techniques. This week saw the first challenge where we watched a demonstration video about adding very simple texture to a cardfront – and this is my attempt at trying to replicate it. Sadly I don’t have any of the Hero Arts mixed media products yet, so I made do with whatever paste I could find (it was a very thick pastillage texture paste from Gina K that I hadn’t opened yet). It didn’t give the same results, but I’m super happy with how it turned out! I used the Mermaid stamp set by Hero Arts for my image and sentiment – as for what I used on the background, I threw so many different types of ink etc at it, I couldn’t honestly tell you what ended up in the final product!
I have so much more to learn with mixed media, but I’m looking forward to the journey along the way.
While I’m at it, I think this card also works well for the following challenges: The Paper Funday great outdoors challenge, Never Before Used Schtuff challenge, and Simon Says Stamp happy birthday challenge.
Day 5 and holiday tags
A few things used on day 5 that I hadn’t used before – the tag die and the inks used for the background stamps, the sentiment stamp, and an Artistro gold pen. I’ve never made a batch of gift tags before, so this was a fun new challenge for me. They’ll be attached to wee bags of chocolates for my monthly craft group that’s meeting this weekend for our final catch-up before Christmas.
Supplies used:
- Perfect Poinsettias stamp set by Gina K Designs
- Sentiment from Merriest Christmas by Taylored Expressions
- Dye inks by Gina K Designs: Lipstick, Red Velvet, Cherry Red, Faded Brick, Chocolate Brown, and Light and Medium Spruce
- Artistro gold pen
- Nested Tag Shapes dies by Hero Arts
Lounging pups make me smile
I just love this sweet stamp set – Lounging Pups by Hero Arts. This card was originally created for the Craft Roulette challenge this week, but the card unexpectedly worked out perfectly for some other challenges too. This week the parameters were:
- Project: Z-fold card
- Colours: Green background + 2 (and neutrals)
- Element: Rock(s)
- Random: Floating
I’m entering this card for the following challenges as well as Craft Roulette this week:
- Just Us Girls challenge of ‘mammals’
- Let’s Craft and Create challenge of ‘fun in the sun’
- Cardz 4 Guys challenge of ‘summer theme’
Crop & Create Delivered – Hero Arts
The class with Libby Hickson and Hero Arts was another fun one. I’d never made a card with vellum before, and the easel card was the only style I’d made previously (although never a horizontal version. I was really nervous about colouring such a large image (the bunny) with Copics, but it wasn’t too bad in the end.
Some things I loved about this class:
- Being challenged by colouring a large image – it really stretched me, which is good.
- I love the cherry stamps – so effective creating the cheery bright background just with cherries – something I haven’t tried before, nor have I tried vellum for the card base – lots of new learnings!
- I adore the sweet bunny card – the stencil background is so cheery, and I’ll definitely use it more in the future.
- I really dislike fussy cutting, but it was so worth it for these fun projects! I may or may not have since ordered the dies for the bunnies and flowers, though, as I’ll definitely be doing more of these.
I used Gina K Designs inks for my cards – Turquoise Sea, Jelly Bean Green, Red Hot, Cherry Red, and Grass Green.