From the Vault - Celebrating 45 Years of Hero Arts

I've got 3 fun cards to share today - all using fabulous new products from Hero Arts from their "from the Vault" collection where they have refreshed some of their older discontinued items to celebrate their amazing 45 years in the craft industry.

The first vault item that was a total must have for me was the aged shadow stamp - I love a good sized background stamp as they make it really easy to frame a simple stamped image as I did hear making the really simple stem from their From the Vault Flowers stamp into something special.   I used the sentiment from the same set to make a nice simple thank you card for the celebrant at the funeral next week.

All the stamping is done with my new favourite Versafine Clair inks - here I used Golden Meadow for the background and Rain Forest for the rest.

The From the Vault Flowers stamp features some of Hero Arts' favourite floral images from the past 45 years and I do think its got some fabulous little gems in it - so I did another card using the watering can image this time.

I stamped the image onto white card and coloured with pencils and used the co-ordinating dies to cut it out.  To create the card I started with a top folding sand base card and added a frame die cut with the new wood frame infinity dies from kiwi cardstock and mounted the image over the frame.   The sentiment again stamped in Versafine Clair Rain Forest, comes from the From the Vault Birthday stamp set.   I simply added a pencil border using the same orange I used on the flowers to frame the whole card and add balance to the design.

For my final card I wanted to keep the theme of "spilling out of frames" from my first two cards and to bring all the elements together.

Here I used the cheerful panda from the From the Vault Birthday stamp set and again cut him out with the co-ordinating dies after colouring him with pencils.

I stamped the aged shadow stamp onto a top folding ivory base card using Golden Meadow ink and then after wiping the stamp I inked up just the edges using Glamorous and then stamping it over the top to get that russet colour.  I picked cardstock scraps to match the colours in the card and die cut the two smallest frames of the Wood Frame Infinity dies and overlapped them all so I could stand the panda in the middle.   I finished with a sentiment from the Birthday stamp stamped in black into the frame and a few dots of Rhubarb stickles around the edges.      

Hope that's encouraged you to play around with frames and to check out the amazing range of items Hero Arts have pulled back out of their vault.........

NEWS FROM THE STORE


Please remember we will be closed all day on Wednesday for the funeral so bear with us whilst we catch up.

We are expecting the following this week:

• The latest releases from AlteNew
• The latest release from SugarPea Designs
• The new kit items and some restocks from MFT

I think that's everything, but to be honest my head is full of a million other things at the moment and I spent the day yesterday at a gin festival so I'm not fully awake so there may be things I've missed - we'll announce all arrivals on Facebook as always.

Catch you next Sunday

Tara
x
 

Penguins in Paradise

Hey stampers, Anni here!

It's summer time and I hope you're having a good time. To bring even more summer feeling to your house I have a beach card for you today.
One of my all time favourite stamp sets is My Favorite Things’ Penguins in Paradise. All these penguins are so cute!

I stamped the penguin with the swim ring in black and coloured him with coloured pencils. 
For the background I wanted something light and fresh. So I mixed some turquoise watercolour with a lot of water and spritzed it on the edge of the rectangle.

The palm trees from Lawn Fawn’s Tropical Backdrop are perfect to create a beachy feeling. I used the seperate palm trees and the grass (a very cute detail in my opinion) from this set and die cut them from coloured cardstock.

For the beach I took some beige cardstock and added some splashes of various brown colours.

The sentiment came from Mama Elephant’s Beach Chickies Set. I cut two banners of matching cardstock and stamped the sentiment on one of them and heat embossed it in white!

Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty weekend!!

Anni

      

Found On Friday - June Part Two!

It's the final Friday of the month so time for our regular "Found on Friday" feature where we select customer makes to share with you from our private "SHC VIP's GROUP" over on Facebook.

I'm starting the issue with this bright and bold Father's Day card from Natalie that just really make me smile.  She used some of my favourite products from Avery Elle - Sea-prise for the fabulous shark and Swell for the background.

Danielle's big bold butterfly card really screamed pick me from the VIP group too - her alcohol inked background is just gorgeous against the black silhouette!
 

Jodie's clean and simple Oddball Turtle by Stamping Bella also stood out - sometimes a great image is all you need to make a fabulous card and here Jodie's colouring and the colours she chose for her background layers just really makes him sing!
 

Ushii's really soft no line colouring makes this card simply dreamy and I love how she paired images from Joy Ornaments with Pix from Mama Elephant.  I hope pink is still on trend this coming Christmas as I loved it being so popular last year!

Anne-Marie added real depth and detail to this card by using the Waffle Flower Nested domes and I love all the details surrounding the chef and his little friend!

Sometimes however you don't need layers to be effective - one layer cards sometimes scare people, but I love them and Charlotte created one to absolute perfection here using Papa Bear from Newton's Nook.  I love how she created a "frame" but has just a couple of elements flowing beyond it - a really clever way to trick your eye.

That's my pick for this month - we'll be back again with two more selections in July so don't forget to head on over to the VIP (customer only) group on Facebook and get sharing your makes if you want to be featured in a future edition.   Make sure you comment on what supplies you've used so I can easily work it out and write about it!

Tara

Mama Elephant - Shall We Dance

Hello everyone!

 I'm back with another card - this time I used Shall We Dance stamp set from Mama Elephant and ink blending technique with Distress Oxides to create the background. 

My first step was to stamp those cute critters on to piece of watercolour paper with Versafine Onyx Black. I also added clear embossing powder while the ink was still wet, and then heat set it. ( I took advantage of the fact that Versafine staying wet longer, but you can also add embossing ink and different colour of embossing powder to change the look of this card ).
For watercolouring today I chose Arteza markers in greys and pinks. 

To create the background, I did ink blending with Distress Inks. I also added splatters using clean water.
After fussy cutting ( coordinating dies are also available here ) and adhering everything in place, I stamped sentiments from the same set with black ink and added Nuvo glitter drops. 

 My last step was to add my card panel to a white card base with double-sided adhesive. 

That's it! Thank you for stopping by! 

Have a great day! See you soon!
Anna

Birthday Balloon Birds

Hello, Tallie here.

Today I have a project that extends the use of your stamps. The Avery Elle Love Is In the Air stamp set is very love/Valentines themed, so I challenged myself to make a birthday card. Paired with the Concord & 9th Simple Serif Alphabet Dies, I think I achieved a card that could even be masculine!

I started out by blending on some Broken China Distress Oxide Ink over the Echo Park Pirate Tales Sail Away stencil onto a white card base.

For the sentiment, I die cut the 'HAPPY' letters using the Concord & 9th Simple Serif Alphabet Dies. I adhered these towards the bottom of the card base, stamping out the 'BIRTHDAY' sentiment from the MFT Essential Sentiments set.

Thanks for reading, catch you next week!

Tallie

  

Best Wishes

Hello, it's Liz here today. I have cracked open a new stamp set, Floral Notes by Avery Elle (a matching die set is also available). When I saw this set I knew I had to have it, it's such an unusual shape and I have so many ideas swirling around in my head!

This time I stamped the image with my Versafine Onyx Black ink pad and used my AlteNew Watercolour Paints to colour. The background paper is from the Simple Vintage Botanicals pad by Simple Stories. I love that this sheet of paper has just a touch of pattern around the edges leaving the centre plain for my sentiment.

Thanks for stopping by today, happy crafting! 

Big Blue Hydrangea

I'm sure I've said before that I don't normally make many floral cards... I love flowers and 

plants with many in our garden and have a few sets in my stash but they're not my go-to images.

Having said that I couldn't resist this huge Hydrangea image which is one of the new line of stamps from 

Colorado Crafts called Big and Bold.... and they certainly are!! 

I stamped the whole image in Shaded Lilac and Bundled Sage distress ink, trying to ink the flowers

 and leaves/sem in the correct colour but not fussing too much if it isn't exact as the watercolour will hide any

 overlaps. I then painted the whole image and used the shading on the stamp to guide me with light and dark areas. 

I went with a loose style and allowed the layers to dry before adding more. 

I finished off by returning the piece into my Stamping platform and re-stamped the whole 

image using Versafine Clair Morning Mist which made the image much crisper.

I used a square die to cut the final area I wanted to use on a 5"sq card and then heat embossed a sentiment 

from the Anything But Basic Encouragement Stamp onto a strip of vellum.

 I felt it didn't show enough so I used a wider strip behind it which gives a nicer finished look too.

These florals are great for colouring, there large size is great for that and

they cover a card easily but still have a Clean and Simple feel.

 

Thanks for stopping by :)

Jenny x

Inky Backgrounds

Apologies for the late post today - we woke to an overnight dishwasher disaster all over the kitchen floor this morning so we've been mopping rather than crafting this morning!

I've been having a play with options for inking backgrounds today using a couple of different inks so you can see a little better how they compare.

Firstly - I made a run rainbow birthday card using Distress Oxides and layered some stamping over the top in the same ink colours.

I simply blended stripes down my top fold dove white card using Candied Apple, Spiced Marmelade, Mustard Seed, Twisted Citron, Mermaid Lagoon and Wilted Violet, blended each into the other in between.   I sprayed with water for a light mist and then added some larger drops of water for the oxidised effect.  I then stamped using the same inks filling the background with streamers and confetti from the very useful little Cheeky Birthday stamp from Hero Arts and finished with a stacked Big Happy Birthday die cut from Mama Elephant.

Then to compare the oxides to the new Reactive Inks from Hero Arts, I made a quick thank you card.  I picked 3 shades and did stripes again, starting with Fog, then Pool Party and Blue Raspberry at the top.  Again sprayed and splattered with water and left to dry.  These inks are a hybrid dye/pigment similar to oxides but without the oxide effect but they do still react with water so the look is similar.  I found them a bit wetter than an oxide and because of that found it a little easier to get a softer blend.  Less colours to choose from (15 currently whereas there are 60 oxides) but there are some shades that could fill gaps in between oxides if you want to use both together.

I turned it into card with the addition of a grey die cut hilly thanks from  Mama Elephant.

When I was cleaning my blending tools (I spray them with clean water and dry on kitchen paper) I noticed the colour looked pretty so decided to have a play, and managed a really quick watercolour style background for another card (I just grabbed a card not watercolour paper so it warped a bit but the effect would be awesome on the right cardstock)

The top here is the pool party shade, then Berry Smoothie and Thistle at the bottom - all just one dunk on the pad with the blender, sprayed with water, most of the colour dabbed off and a quick stroke across the card.  This time finished with the Hilly Hello die cut again from Mama Elephant this time cut from White Glitter card - Pixie Dust from Lawn Fawn.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

I'm still working on finishing adding all the new Hero Arts items - it takes around 10 minutes to load each item to store and I do it around packing orders which always get priority, and as we've got lots of other stuff going on which is taking me out of the office for meetings etc then I am just desperately playing catch up.  I'll get it done just as quickly as I can.

We're expecting the following deliveries this week:

• Wplus9's new release plus restocks
• Sugar Pea Designs latest release and "most" restocks but some wait listed items are on back order still as they haven't got them left in stock themselves.
• Hopefully Altenews latest release plus restocks but I am still waiting on confirmation that they are ready to ship it.

• Lil' Inker Designs have a new release this week but we are not able to order that in advance so will have that hopefully next week instead.

We will be closed on 3rd July for my Mum's funeral so nothing will ship that day and we will not be answering correspondence.  Thanks for your patience.

Tara

A Birthday Card and a Very Special Voucher

Hey stampers, Anni here!

A colleague asked me to make a birthday card for his daughter! She had a very special wish: She wanted a voucher for a dental prophylaxis. So I had to make a card for this special request.

Fortunately I found a little tooth in Mama Elephant’s Little Fairy Agenda set. That gave me the idea that one of Mama Elephant’s Three Amigos could show this tooth on his sign. I started by stamping the raccoon and the cat from the set in a very light ink because I wanted to do some no line colouring. The Happy Birthday I stamped in black on the other sign.

To get more of a birthday feeling I also stamped some balloons from Mama Elephant's The Birthday Bash and a cupcake from Mama Elephant’s Carnival Cupcakes. I coloured the images by pressing Distress Ink pads onto a acryl block and watercolouring with this colour palette.
For all of these sets you can find coordinating dies in the shop.

For the background I took a piece of white cardstock and added a little bit of very soft ink blending through Newton’s Nook’s Bokeh Stencil Set. 
To give this scene a frame I die cut Mama Elephant’s Framed Tags Madison Avenue and adhered it with dimensional adhesive. That finished up my card.

Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty weekend.
Anni