Hero Arts Layering Poppy

It's my day over at A2Z Scrapbooking.   Our challenge is about using your favourite Hero Art product.   One of my most favourite Hero Arts stamp sets is a Poppy one from a number of years ago.  Here is a card I made with it in 2014

 

Recently Hero Arts brought out a Color Layering Poppy and it's become my NEW favourite.....

Isn't it simply gorgeous.  There is a matching set of inks, but I don't have them so used some Altenew inks to stamp up the layers and Versafine Onyx Black for the flower centres and the sentiment.

So pull out your favourite Hero Arts products and come and join us at A2Z. 

I'm entering this into the "Anything Goes" at A Blog Named Hero

My favourite colour....

My favourite colour is PURPLE.... and today it's our latest challenge at Southern Girls Challenge and it's all about "Your Favorite Colour Combo" Our Sponsors this time round are

 

I was lucky enough to get a gorgeous  set of stamps from  Meetu at Krafters Cart to work with.

I made a mask to sponge the purple oval on my die cut background.  I used a couple of Purple inks from Altenew.  I then stamped the little happy squirrel onto some white card and coloured with Copics.  I used some colourless blender on a rag to mottle the fur.  I then fussy cut it out.  The sentiment is from the set together with the Happy Birthday from a Catherine Pooler set.   I used some purple patterned paper for my background. 

We would love to see your favourite  colour combo so come and join us. 

Weekend fun

I managed to get a bit of stamping done over the weekend.  Some really CAS and one more complex

Saturday I joined Cindy's Hero Art Flickr group 90 mins Scramble.  With the coming of the Northern Hemisphere summer, the Scrambles are over a 24hr period.  You just choose your own 90 min time slot and go for it!  This suits me

Last week I got some new Hero Arts stamps so this was a great time to try them out.  Cindy taksed us to use an Oval on our projects

It took me three goes to line up my peacock and die cut him.   Still not perfect but I didn't have enough time to do it a fourth time.  I had brought the matching ink cubes - Lemon Yellow, Emerald Green, Deep Ocean and Navy.  I used the blues and green to sponge the background. And then the yellow to stamp the feather.    I die cut a Spellbinders Oval and stamped on the sentiment.  Add a few Enamel Accents to finish.  Not bad for 70mins.

Sunday I had some spare time - on a very humid and sticky day when my craft room was a bit cooler.  I had also just got an Altenew stamp set called Halftone Circles and took a piece of A5 card (15cm x 21cm) and using some of the Altenew Blue inks stamped a variety of the circles - going from lighter at the top to darker at the bottom.  I then cut the panel in half to make two cards.

For the top card, I used the lighter part and added a few little darker circles.  I did some selective stamping of the last part of the sentiment. 

For the lower one, I added some of the Hero Arts Emerald Green and Lemon Yellow inks with little circles.  I added a stripe of the dark blue with the sentiment white embossed. The sentiment is from a set of 25 that came with a magazine last week.   I added some Liquid pearls for an accent.

These two cards took no time and were such fun to stamp. 

And finally I wanted to try out a technique I saw a while back.  Stamp with white pigment ink and then overstamp with dye inks.

It didn't work out as I thought as the white ink looks more light blue than white, but I was still very happy with the more soft result I achieved. 

In just over 1 week I'm heading over to Perth to spend Easter with my daughter and her family.... and then on the 20th to celebrate Archer turning one, so I'm trying hard to get ahead with my design work as well as getting the house tidied up for the house sitter and to make a card for Daughter - her birthday is early May so I'll take the card with me. 

Thanks for stopping by. 

It's April!

Can you believe it's April already!  Where is the year going? 
So 1st of the month means some new challenges underway.  Two of the teams I am involved have their monthly challenges starting. 

Over at Die Cut Divas, we are have a Birthday Challenge.  The team got to work with some images from Fabrika Fantasy. 

I chose to use a pre-coloured image and then enhanced it will Prismacolour pencils

A great way to get a card made quickly. 

And over at Chalk'n'Stock we have our usual "Anything Goes".  As usual, chalk needs to be used on your project.   We are sponsored by Bugaboo and I used a sweet Easter image

My background was made with a stencil and versamark and then I used chalks to colour it up.  I made the sentiment on my computer. 

We finished Daylight Saving over night... which means winter on it's way!  However with a temperature of 25C degrees (77 F.)and very humid.    I spent some time indoors creating... but that's for another day!

Thanks for stopping by. 

Tag You're It #68

The delightful Gayatri (who I have personally meet!) is the Featured Artist over at Tag You're It and she has given us an awesome tag to inspire us..

I was inspired by the brickwork, the little hearts and the side-ways sentiment and of course the cute little puppy.
Here's my take on it

 

I started by stamping the little Tiddly Inks stamp onto my die cut tag (Pretty Pink Posh die).  I then made a mask so I could sponge the brick background stencil.  I used Altenew Silver Stone ink  for the bricks.  The image was coloured with Copic Markers.  My sentiment came from a set of 25 that came with a magazine I got this week.  I added a few little hearts that are from a Hero Arts set.   I used a fineline pen to outline the hearts.  

My Face Book feed reminded me today that March 2009 was when I first started blogging.  The last 8 years have simply flown by and I am enjoying this hobby even more.  

Thanks for stopping by today.

Panda Birthday

Over at Die Cut Diva's this month our challenge is Love of Animals.

My little Grandie is turning one next month (20th April - doesn't time fly!)

So I made him this card

I used some soft blue card to emboss the hearts.  The folder and stamp set were freebies with a magazine I got a few weeks ago.  I stamped the Panda onto the centre of the card and then again onto some white card.  I then fussy cut the bear and balloon and over laid them.  I then used a Kaisercraft number die to cut the one and stamped the little "st"  I added some Spectrum Noir sparkle pen to the balloon and a few selected spots on the embossed hearts.

I'll be taking this with me at Easter when we head over to Perth to see the family.  And we get to spend Archer's first birthday with him and his Mummy and Daddy... super excited.   My daughter sends me photos and videos almost every day, so I keep up with what is happening in his life.  He's just started walking.... it's fun to see him tottering about.  Here he is in his bath

Thanks for stopping by.

My own personal craft retreat

WARNING: PHOTO HEAVY POST

This weekend was the Mangawhai Walking Weekend and my hubby and our friends went on a four hour tramp.  my knees can't handle the hills so I set myself up on three dinning table for my own private craft Retreat!

I started crafting at 8.45am and was still going good at 2.00pm when they arrived back.  got a total of 8 cards done.  One for an upcoming DT post and 7 just for fun Cards!

So here the are!
First up is wanted to try out the technique theater Jennifer McGuire did with veramark and Perfect Pearls.  I used a very dark blue base.   I used an Altenew stamps and then heat embossed the sentiment in white.  looking  good then I flipped to mark where I wanted to trim, did so and then when I flipped it back, I'd chopped off the last letter of the sentiment!  Urrrgh. Here's how I saved it

Next I tried the same technique but with Gold Perfect Pearls

 My next two cards in involved masking and sponging.  I die cut a circle with a Simon Says Stamp die and used both the positive and negative parts.   The positive circle was temporarily glued to the card and then start pedal with the goose half on and half off.  the entire masked the goose and did the sponging.

Entering this one into the Circle challenge at Crafting When We Can. 

For this one I sponged through the negative space as a mask

The goose is from a Stampin' Up and the Lighthouse is an Altenew set with a Rosie's Studio sentiment.

After a quick sandwich I got onto some pencil colouring using Altenew stamps and Faber-Castell pencils and Gamsol.

Next was to use a panel I'd made last week to make a card.

And finally a card I made a card for the Lawn fawn challenge

I made this one to entry into the new Lawn Fawnatics Challenge blog... I don't have many Lawn Fawn stamps but this one has been in my stash for sometime and never been used!   Some more masking of the little clouds and the balloon.

Thanks for staying long enough to reach this point I appreciate it.

Hope your weekend was a good as mine.

Hero Arts Black Butterfly

It's my day to share at A2Z scrapbooking today and I am continuing with our theme of using a stencil on your project....

The other day I saw a video by Ingrid Blackburn where she used embossing paste with a stencil, shook on some Colourbursts/Brusho's and spritzed with water.  I have something called Pixie Powder which is similar to these with lots of mica powder in them.   I thought I'd give it a go.



It has produced such a pretty pale pastel background as I went lightly with the powders.  Did get a bit of seepage but it adds to the whole look.    I have used Hero Arts Swirl Stencil (currently out of stock but you can do a special order - check out the store HERE)

Once my panel had dried, I die cut it with a rectangle die from DieNamics (MFT) and layered onto black then onto a white base.  I die cut the Hero Arts Butterfly Fancy Die from black card.  The sentiment is from THIS Hero Arts stamp and die set.  (currently on sale in the A2Z store!)

Remember if you go shopping to use code Dawn15 at checkout to receive 15% off your purchase of $25 or more (before tax and shipping).  And don’t forget that we are on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.  Follow us on these different social media outlets so you won’t miss out on any fun promotions!

Plus during the month of March, we’re giving you a second way to win a $25 Gift Certificate to the a2z Store! Just comment on any blog posts here in March.
We’ll do a random draw from the blog comments during the month of March for one gift card. You can enter once a day by commenting on the blog post and earn up to 31 chances to win! If you’re feeling it, you’re welcome to enter both the Hero Arts with Stencils challenge and the commenting challenge…maybe you’ll win both!