Category Archives: Hero Arts

Watercolor Tulips

She’s home! My daughter, that is. Three in the morning is an awful time to arrive but very much worth the wait. We have a crazy busy week planned and I can’t wait to get started. Road trip today!

A few weeks ago I was playing around with watercolor paints. Not the ink refills but the actual tubes of watercolor paint. While I was experimenting I ended up doing a little freestyle watercolor sketch and made it into a card.

The great thing about watercolors, is their transparency and fluidity lend themselves well to a very informal and rough simple style. When you watercolor it doesn’t have to be perfect.

To make the tulips, I started out by making rough oval shapes with a very light application of my hue. As it dries you can add layers to build up the color and add some definition to the image. The leaves and stems are just simply long quick brush strokes that trail off.

Quick Tip: Try experimenting with different mediums. Explore your creativity and think outside the box or in this case, outside stamped images. You can do it!

Have a creative day!

case study no. 3

The weeks are flying by here and it’s Thursday again. Time for another CASE study project to share with you. I apologize for pretty much dropping off the map this past week. I truly thought that Fall would bring a slower pace to my life. I think perhaps I just need to learn that life with a large family never slows down.

This also brings me to the sentiment on today’s card design…Today is a new day. I’m so glad for each morning when the day arrives fresh and new and full of possibility. I’m so glad that each new day brings the possibility of something wonderful.

For the month of October, a few of my designs have been chosen as inspiration on the CASE study blog. You can find this week’s inspiration and the challenge here.

There are a few things I’ve been inspired by from the original design…

  • layout
  • dotted background
  • a cardstock and stamping focus…no patterned paper

To add extra dimension to the stamped background, I sprinkled the Distress Ink with clear embossing powder while it was still wet. I love the subtle tone on tone shine. While the original design had a smaller image repeatedly stamped to create the background, this card uses a text/circle background stamp which makes it lovely and quick to do.

Supplies:

Happy creating!

Happy World Card Making Day 2012

Thanks so much for stopping by today. I know it’s a busy day out there for my crafting friends. I hope you’re having a wonderful creative day!

Today I have a challenge for you and a card to share. Here’s a peek…

Please join me in the CLASSroom for the challenge and the full design. Make sure you check out the other challenges as well as there are some fun ones and more chances to win some great prizes.

Let the WCMD celebration continue!

a case study… week one

There’s nothing quite like a challenge to get your creativity going, is there? When I first started paper crafting, challenges got me hooked on stamping. They encouraged me to try new things and I loved being part of the crafting community. Participating almost daily in challenges helped me to develop my own style and pushed me to improve my designs. Challenges will always be part of my creative process whether they be online challenge, design calls or the challenge of creating with new products.

One challenge site that I’ve recently discovered is the CASE Study Challenge Blog. It’s a fun and unique site as each month they feature a guest designer for each of their weekly challenges. I’m excited to be their October guest designer for the duration of the month. For each week, they’ve chosen a design that I’ve created in the past and use it for inspiration for their design team. The exciting thing is you can use the designs to inspire you to create anything at all. You can choose to be inspired by the layout, by the color scheme, by the technique or just by some element of the design. How fun is that? I love flexibility!

Another thing that excites me about this month is that I’ll be playing along with the CASE study design team to create something new. I’ve been feeling a little dry in the creative department lately so I’m enjoying these challenges to hopefully rev things up a little.

Today’s card was inspired by a card I created for the CLASSroom nine months ago. You can find this inspiration piece and the design team’s take on it on the CASE Study blog here.

It may be a little bit difficult to see at first what inspired me so I’ll get you up to speed. The color scheme is very similar and I was inspired to use Ranger Distress Stains and the Prima Resist Canvas again. The resist canvas flowers and tab are colored with distress stains and I’ve also created the background with the stains as well.


I love the effect I ended up with by layering the card with a mask and then dabbing on two colors of distress stain. To make sure that the inks didn’t run, I dried the cardstock well with a heat gun before stamping on it.

This card made its way across the miles to my daughter whom I’m missing dreadfully. I can’t wait to see her for Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend!

Supplies:

Happy creating!

i {heart} wood

The wood and woodgrain trend is so going strong and I’m lovin’ on it. I love the simplicity of wood and its warmth. It’s also fabulous for stamping on.

Today I’m in the CLASSroom sharing some wood stamping tips and this pretty card. Why not join me?

Happy Friday!

90 years young

This weekend we celebrated the 90th birthday of the lovely Mrs. Smith. She’s a wonderful lady at our church and it was so nice to be able to celebrate her special day. Everyone I talked to at the open house could just not believe she is 90. What a blessing to be so healthy and full of life at that age!

Of course I just had to make her a card. I had thought about the number 90 being the central theme but instead decided to tuck the age on the bottom right pennant on the patterned paper.

This card uses the October Afternoon Farmhouse collection. I love using their beautiful 8×8 size paper pads. The sweet little chipboard birdie is from the chipboard sheet that coordinates with this line.

The patterned paper on this card is so very pretty that I just didn’t want to cover it up with a sentiment layer. By stamping it on part of the embellishment cluster, it provides double duty as an embellishment and also the sentiment.

Quick Tip: The area you are stamping on doesn’t always have to be larger than your stamped image. Play around with stamping just a portion of the image onto a smaller surface such as this canvas tag.

Supplies:

Have a beautiful day!

felt foliage

I’m doing a little fall cleaning these days. It feels good to get caught up around the house after a very busy summer.

I’ve been doing some cleaning  out of my blog as well. I found this card in the drafts folder. I’m very embarrassed to say it’s been sitting there for a couple years. It’s pretty simple, so perhaps that is why I haven’t shared it. I still like it though, so here you go…

I was playing around with texture when I created this card. I love the contrast of the felt with the corrugated paper. I can’t quite remember just where all the supplies came from but I think the sentiment and the adhesive lace is from Hero Arts. The felt and foliage die are from Papertrey Ink. Oh yes, the sequin flower center is from Prima.

Happy creating!