In keeping with our challenge theme I created a holiday card. Halloween is a fun holiday for me. I like decorating around the house and the front yard. My card is a combination of using digital images, ink blending and stamping.
The first thing I did when creating my card was take the haunted house from the Hero Arts Haunted Digital kit and had my Cameo cut it out. I had to change the png image by using trace and then I resized it. It did take a while to cut because it has all this tiny holes in the house for a distressed look.
Then I did some ink blending with 1 Hero Arts Reactive Ink and 3 Oxide Distress Inks on the background. I sprayed the background a bit with a mini mister.
I used the pumpkin from the digital kit also. I resized it and duplicated it to make 3 pumpkins. I colored the stems with a brown Copic pen and the faces with yellow. I hand cut them out. One of the pumpkins is raised with one of those really thick glue dots.
The sentiment I cut out with Hero Arts set Halloween Trimmings stamp and cut. I put some Versamark on the words and then sprinkled on some black embossing powder and heat embossed it. There are several different embossing powders in the a2z Scrapbooking Etsy store including a detail black and a sparkle black.
Hello! I created a sun and sand card for you today. After all we are getting closer and closer to beach weather. The Beach Adventure Digital Kit caught my eye and I liked that there are so many images in the kit to choose from.
Lets start off with the background on my card. I blended Oxide Distress ink on an oval die cut. I then used a stamp at the bottom to stamp with Versamark and sprinkled on some Hero Arts sand embossing powder and heat embossed it. I was happy to finally use it.
Then I cut out an oval smaller than the background oval from a 4 1/4 X 5 1/2 panel. I selected all of the fun images I wanted on the card. I sized them and printed them out. The umbrella prints with one set of the stripes and the starfish is colored in when printed. The rest of the images are black outlines. I colored all of the images with Copics. I added a bit of sparkle to the fish, the umbrella and the ball (which you can’t really see in the photo). I cut out all of the images.
The sun is from a stamp set and I also colored it in with Copics and hand cut it out.
The sentiment is stamped also.
Here is a look at all the different images in this kit. Fun!
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Please join us in this month’s “Fun Folds” challenge for your chance at a free digital stamp set AND, if you used Hero Arts or Sugartree Stamps, a $20 gift card to our Etsy store. Our current monthly challenge can always be found in the menu bar, and runs from the 1st to last day of the month.
The a2z scrapbooking store carries a wide variety of Hero Arts products as well as a nice selection of digital stamps! Get discounted new releases, sales, grab bags & more. Proceeds from our store benefit Celiac & Behcets disease foundations. Use my discount code Karen15 to get 15% off your purchase of $25 or more. If you’re looking for a Hero Arts product you don’t see in store, use the Request Custom Order button from with-in the shop.
Hello it’s Karen today with a card about getting out there and checking out a big city near you. That would be San Francisco for me. The City Adventures Digital Set is perfect for that, look at that bridge.
You could use the images in this set for a card and for scrapbooking. The beauty is you can size them to fit your project and print or cut them out with an electronic die cutting machine. Here is what I did with some of the images.
San Francisco is about 45 minutes away when the traffic is decent. Of course I have been there many times. I am lucky almost all the time we go we get nice weather instead of a foggy day. My husband works in San Francisco so he sees it every week day.
To start off I did some ink blending on the background. That is after I adjusted the size of the bridge and printed it on the cardstock. I even looked up the hex code for the color of the Golden Gate. I don’t remember the code but the color is called international orange.
I then sized the scooter and the car and printed those. I colored with Copics, a metallic pen in silver and a Pen-touch pen. On the windows of the car I used Nuvo Glaze. You can’t really see it on the scooter but I put a touch of Nuvo on the headlight. I hand cut the car and scooter. I put some foam tape under the car and the scooter when attaching them. As far as the car I had to have that VW on there and it had to be orange. My first car.
I die cut a little bird and colored it gray with a Copic.
I stamped the sun and since it was more of an outline sun I did some ink blending on it.
Then there is the sentiment stamped with Versafine ink.
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Please join us in this month’s “Color It In” challenge for your chance at a free digital stamp set AND, if you used Hero Arts or Sugartree Stamps, a $20 gift card to our etsy store. Our current monthly challenge can always be found in the menu bar, and runs from the 1st to last day of the month
The a2z scrapbooking store carries a wide variety of Hero Arts products as well as a nice selection of digital stamps! Get discounted new releases, sales, grab bags & more. Proceeds from our store benefit Celiac & Behcets disease foundations. Use my discount code Karen15 to get 15% off your purchase of $25 or more. If you’re looking for a Hero Arts product you don’t see in store, use the Request Custom Order button from with-in the shop.
Howdy! Welcome to a new year! I hope you all enjoyed the holidays. They can be hectic but very nice with all the family gatherings, decorations and of course delicious food.
When I thought about a card to make I decided it would be for my brother. You know those sometimes hard to make masculine cards. So here we are with a safari theme which I think can work for a male or female.
I used the Hero Arts Tag Infinity dies to cut out, guess what, a tag. Then out came the Oxide Distress Inks. I blended 2 purples and 1 blue ink on Bristol paper.
I cut out the sunset circle using a die from the Hero Arts My Monthly Hero June 2017 set and also used Bristol paper and blended Oxide inks. You can get this die by itself from Hero Arts.
For the tree and animals I blended some Black Soot Oxide Distress ink on Neenah paper and then cut them out using the dies from the My Monthly Hero kit. In real life they look like a chalky black. Note: Instead of the animal dies you could use Hero Arts Color Layering Elephant stamp set in the a2z Scrapbooking Etsy store. Hero Arts also has several sets that include lot’s of fun safari animals, trees, sentiments both dies and stamps.
For the background I stamped with Quick Quotes ink using the Hero Arts Mud Cloth Bold Prints stamp.
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Please join us in this month’s “Anything Goes” challenge for your chance at a free digital stamp set AND, if you used Hero Arts or Sugartree Stamps, a $20 gift card to our etsy store. Our current monthly challenge can always be found in the menu bar, and runs from the 1st to last day of the month
The a2z scrapbooking store carries a wide variety of Hero Arts products as well as a nice selection of digital stamps! Get discounted new releases, sales, grab bags & more. Proceeds from our store benefit Celiac & Behcets disease foundations. Use my discount code Karen15 to get 15% off your purchase of $25 or more. If you’re looking for a Hero Arts product you don’t see in store, use the Request Custom Order button from with-in the shop.
Hero Arts Tag Infinity Dies – These can be ordered from the a2z Scrapbooking Etsy store using the Request Custom Order button on the left side of the screen
Howdy! It is time to get some Christmas cards done. The Home for the Holidays stamp set has so many cute things to make up a scene and dies to match. There is one more house, a few more trees, several sentiments and a few other fun things in this set.
To create this little scene I started by doing some ink blending with Distress inks on an oval, that I cut out, using two different colors of blue. I cut a hill using a die and glued that over the ink blended oval. There is a little bit of glitter along the top of hill which might be kind of hard to see.
For the houses I stamped them and colored them using Copic pens. For all of the snow I used a Quickie glue pen and then sprinkled on ultra fine glitter. The glue pen worked really nice to get in the small areas and cover the roof of the brown house. I stamped the smoke for the chimneys with Oxide Distress ink in gray. I really like that smoke stamp in this set.
I stamped the trees and die cut them along with the snowman. On the snowman I also used the Quickie glue pen and he got some glitter too. For his hat I colored it with a black Glaze pen. For his scarf I used a Copic pen.
The sentiment is also from the Home for the Holidays set but I did a little altering. It is actually We wish you a Merry Christmas. I like that sentiment but it was a bit to long so when I inked up the stamp I just covered the first part with paper so there wasn’t any ink on that part.
To frame it I used an oval die from the Hero Arts Nesting Oval Infinity Dies to cut an opening in a panel.
Are you on social media? We are! Please join us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook? so you don’t miss any fun promotions or new challenge announcements!
Please join us in this month’s “Give Thanks” challenge for your chance at a free digital stamp AND, if you used Hero Arts or Sugartree Stamps, a $20 gift card to our store. Our current monthly challenge can always be found in the menu bar, and runs from the 1st to last day of the month.
The a2z scrapbooking store carries a wide variety of Hero Arts products! Get discounted new releases, sales, grab bags & more. Proceeds from our store benefit Celiac & Behcets disease foundations. Use my discount code Karen15to get 15% off your purchase of $25 or more. If you’re looking for a Hero Arts product you don’t see in store, use the Request Custom Order button from with-in the shop.
Howdy to you all! Today I have a Thanksgiving card for you. I hope you are having some decent Fall weather. Here in Northern California I will just say I am not a fan of 80 degrees plus weather at this time of the year. At least the nights are nice and cool.
I began my card by ink blending some Quick Quotes inks to create a Fall look to the sky. I then cut a piece of the leaf paper and adhered that to the card. I got this paper from a fun inexpensive store called Daiso. Anyway as you can see it says Fall.
Next I stamped the two houses with Versamark and used a gold embossing powder to heat emboss them. I colored them in using Copic pens. Next I cut them out using the Home for the Holidays dies that match the stamp set. For the snow on top of the one house I used some Nuvo drops for a little dimension. The Home for the Holidays stamp set leans more towards Christmas but you can use a different color scheme and not put to much snow in and you have Fall.
I found a nice piece of crocheted ribbon (not sure of the actual name) in my stash. I used Hero Arts pretty red brown liquid watercolor to color it. It is a little darker in the photo than it is in real life. I stuck that down using the red line tape.
I adhered my houses to the card and stamped the trees around them. I also stamped some smoke coming out of the chimneys. I think that is a nice little addition to this stamp set.
Then I added the sentiment.
Are you on social media? We are! Please join us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook? so you don’t miss any fun promotions or new challenge announcements!
Please join us in this month’s “Give Thanks” challenge for your chance at a free digital stamp AND, if you used Hero Arts or Sugartree Stamps, a $20 gift card to our store. Our current monthly challenge can always be found in the menu bar, and runs from the 1st to last day of the month.
The a2z scrapbooking store carries a wide variety of Hero Arts products! Get discounted new releases, sales, grab bags & more. Proceeds from our store benefit Celiac & Behcets disease foundations. Use my discount code Karen15to get 15% off your purchase of $25 or more. If you’re looking for a Hero Arts product you don’t see in store, use the Request Custom Order button from with-in the shop.
Howdy it’s Karen with my first post as an a2z Scrapbooking design team member. This is also my first time being on a design team. I am excited to be part of the team and share some cards with you.
For the background of my card I did some ink blending with Distress Oxide inks in Wild Honey and Squeezed Lemonade.
The grass is stamped many times with Peeled Paint Distress Oxide ink. The grass stamp is from the Hero Arts My Monthly Hero June 2017 set along with the safari animals. This set is no longer available but you can get the Safari Huge Thanks clear stamp set in the a2z Scrapbooking Store that has all the animals and the tree that are on my card. The animals, birds and tree are all stamped using Distress Oxide ink Gathered Twigs.
For the frames I used Hero Arts Nested Frame Cuts Ovals to cut them. The inner frame is just some brown paper. For the top frame I first stamped the sentiment on a piece of yellow paper using Hero Arts set It’s Your Day and heat embossed it with brown embossing powder. I had to go over that at the end with a black Copic marker to make it stand out a little more. Then I stamped with the Hero Arts background stamp Mud Cloth Bold Prints using Distress Oxide ink in Gathered Twigs. It needed a bit of fixing so I ink blended over it with Distress Oxide Spiced Marmalade ink. I liked the look and went with it.
Are you on social media? We are! Please join us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook? so you don’t miss any fun promotions or new challenge announcements!
Please join us in this month’s “Birthday Bash” challenge for your chance at a free digital stamp AND, if you used Hero Arts or Sugartree Stamps, a $20 gift card to our Hero Arts store. Our current monthly challenge can always be found in the menu bar, and runs from the 1st to last day of the month
The a2z scrapbooking store carries a wide variety of Hero Arts products! Get discounted new releases, sales, grab bags & more. Proceeds from our store benefit Celiac & Behcets disease foundations. Use my discount code Karen15 to get 15% off your purchase of $25 or more. If you’re looking for a Hero Arts product you don’t see in store, use the Request Custom Order button from with-in the shop.
Hello! Yes, it’s the one-trick-pony Erica back on the blog, with… *drumroll*… another card using texture paste and Hero Arts stencils! Ta-Da!
After this post, I promise I will do something different. Absolutely. Most definitely. Almost positively sure. Maybe… just one or two more? It is just so much fun!!
For this card I thought I combine ink blending and texture paste to add lots of dimension and interest to a rather simple design. I started out by getting some water colour card stock out and I taped it down to a sheet of clear acetate. This is to use both as a mop-up of any ink blending messes and also as a sort of palette for my mixing of the texture paste and ink.
I used the Hero Arts Large Flower Stencil (which is sold out in the shop but if you want to order it, use the ‘request custom order’) but the Hero Arts Spiral Stencil would look fab too. Starting out, I dotted Fossilized Amber Distress Oxide ink in the middle and for the petals I used Picked Raspberry Distress Oxide ink. I didn’t make it very vivid as the idea was to have a light colour underneath and then mix the texture paste with some ink for highlights on some of the petals.
To mix the colour and the paste, I simply dabbed my ink pad on the acetate and then mixed a bit of Ranger Ink White Texture Paste with my spatula. I didn’t mix it overly well as I wanted both the white and the pink to show. Using the spatula I spread the paste on selected petals, going from the middle and outwards. For the middle, I did the same thing with the yellow ink and the paste but this I mixed up very well before I dabbed it on rather than spreading, to get LOTS of texture.
Lifting the stencil is alway the most fun part, as although you have a general idea of how it is going to look, it’s still a revelation!
As the flower was looking rather spectacular I didn’t want to cover up too much of it so sentiment wise I went really simple. A single word stamp and die set from The Ton Stamps that says ‘hugs’, which I cut out from yellow card stock and stamped the sentiment in Picked Raspberry Oxide Ink. I also added a few of the circles and some sequins that matched the pink ink almost perfectly.
When I was looking for the perfect card base for this card I almost went with white, but then I spotted some Lawn Fawn card stock in Guava and thought it would be perfect to add just a tiny bit of accent to the card. I chopped off a thin sliver of the card panel and added it to the card base using double sided foam sheet (cut to perfect size) for a bit of dimension and to add some subtle detailing.
And that my friends, concludes this months third texture paste/embellishment mousse cards! I’ve tried to show different techniques to lure you into the wonderfully messy world of texture paste and I’d love to see what you come up with. Pop a picture in the comment section if you want, sharing is caring after all.
Are you on social media? We are! Please join us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook? so you don’t miss any fun promotions or new challenge announcements!
Please join us in this months “Watercolor” challenge for your chance at a free digital stamp AND, if you used Hero Arts, a $20 gift card to our Hero Arts store. Our current monthly challenge can always be found in the menu bar, and runs from the 1st to last day of the month
The a2z scrapbooking store carries a wide variety of Hero Arts products! Get discounted new releases, sales, grab bags & more. Proceeds from our store benefit Celiac & Behcets disease foundations. Use my discount code Erica15 to get 15% off your purchase of $25 or more. If you’re looking for a Hero Arts product you don’t see in store, use the Request Custom Order button from with-in the shop.
Hello! Erica back on the blog again with, you guessed it, another Nuvo Embellishment Mousse card. Or two. Yes, I’m battling a new addiction and I might (read absolutely) have gone nuts with stencilling and pasting…
Right after I finished my last card, you can find that post here, I just kept on going with different stencils and colours. It turned into a frenzy rather quickly! One of the projects I made was a slightly larger panel, which I have cut in half to make two cards with and those are the cards I’m going to talk about today.
So first off, I got a big piece of water colour card stock out and started blending Twisted Citron Distress Oxide and Peacock Feathers Distress Oxide on it. This I wanted as a background for my stencilling. I sprinkled a bit of water on it and lifted some of the colours off too as I love that look. Once the panel was dry it was time to get creative with the Nuvo Mousse so I armed myself with my spatula and damp cloth for easy clean up after I was done. For this card I used Hero Arts SA105 Deco Pattern stencil along with Nuvo Embellishment Mousse in Gunmetal Grey.
Both those are out of stock at the moment but you can use the ‘Request Custom Order’ button and order it that way OR you could try another combination. I think the Blue Topaz Glimmer Paste would look amazing combined with the Hero Arts Peacock Feather Stencil! Or the Diamond stencil. Just saying.
After smearing the paste over the panel it’s important to clean off your stencil and tool quickly as it does dry rather rapidly. Don’t rush the drying of the paste on your project though, make sure it’s really dry before moving on to the next step as you risk ruining it otherwise.
To finish off my cards I decided to use a new-to-me stamp set from Neat & Tangled called You’re Pretty and it comes with lots of great sentiments like ‘pretty brave’, ‘pretty strong’ and ‘pretty much the best’ which you can mix and match for a variety of purposes.
As I mentioned in the beginning, I cut the panel in two to make two different cards so I did just that. For card no1 I decided to use a linen textured card base in a dark teal colour and I cut this about 1cm bigger than the panel itself was so that it would create a nice frame for it. I adhered the panel to the card base using foam tape to create dimension. Sentiment wise I decided to go with ‘You’re Pretty! Pretty brave’ and the large ‘you’re pretty’ I stamped with VersaMark on vellum and then heat embossed it in Silver embossing powder. Then I cut out the sentiment using the matching die. I also used the die to cut out a piece of foam to stick the vellum on for more dimension. These two I glued together with a glue pen. You can use this one from Nuvo.
The ‘Pretty brave’ sentiment I stamped on white card stock using Distress Oxide ink in Iced Spruce (use the “Request Custom Order’ button to get ahold of this one) and then cut it out using a stitched banner die from My Favorite Things. This banner and the foam layered vellum piece I glued directly onto the panel with double sided tape. A few little white gem stones finished off card no1 nicely.
Card no2 was done very similarly, just using different colours for the sentiments and embellishments to create a new look whilst using pretty much the same stuff. Another piece of linen textured card stock came out, this time in black and I cut this one so it ended up showing almost a whole cm around the entire panel for a dramatic frame. This piece I adhered to a white card base, leaving a very thin bit of white show all around it to create a second frame.
The sentiments are both stamped in black, the ‘pretty kind’ bit is done directly onto the panel and the ‘You’re Pretty!’ is done on vellum and I also heat embossed some Hero Arts Clear embossing powder over it to make it shiny.
This card I kept reasonably flat, the vellum piece was adhered directly to the panel with some vellum friendly adhesive. It’s a pain to work with but does work, once it’s settled, it doesn’t show through the vellum hardly at all, which normal double sided tape tends to do. A healthy sprinkling of Hero Arts Black Gemstones in various sizes finished off card no2.
Well, there we have it. I hope I have inspired you to try texture paste/embellishment mousse if you haven’t tried it already, it really is a great deal of fun!
Happy crafting!
Are you on social media? We are! Please join us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook? so you don’t miss any fun promotions or new challenge announcements!
Please join us in this months “Watercolor” challenge for your chance at a free digital stamp AND, if you used Hero Arts, a $20 gift card to our Hero Arts store. Our current monthly challenge can always be found in the menu bar, and runs from the 1st to last day of the month
The a2z scrapbooking store carries a wide variety of Hero Arts products! Get discounted new releases, sales, grab bags & more. Proceeds from our store benefit Celiac & Behcets disease foundations. Use my discount code Erica15 to get 15% off your purchase of $25 or more. If you’re looking for a Hero Arts product you don’t see in store, use the Request Custom Order button from with-in the shop.
If you are looking for Leslie’s project, please click Here.
Now onto Erica’s post.
Hello, hello! Erica on the blog today with something rather out of my comfort zone. I tried Nuvo Embellishment mousse for the first time and yep, I know I’m late to the party because W-O-W! I’m loving it! Oh yes, I think you will be seeing a lot more of this from me from now on. Honestly, I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to try it. It’s so fun and adds fabulous texture to your projects. Oh, the possibilities!
Today’s card isn’t necessarily my favorite by any means BUT I’m a firm believer of being real when it comes to crafting. Try something and it doesn’t work out? Someone will have made the same mistake and come up with a great solution. Don’t like how it looks? Someone will have an idea of how to make it work. Sharing is caring and sometimes a time-saver for someone else. And with that, I’m going to dive right in:
I started with an A2 sized card panel in water colour card stock and on this I blended a mixture of Distress Oxide ink Picked Raspberry and Worn Lipstick Distress Oxide inks. Next time I might use Abandoned Coral instead to create more of a contrast, it turned out a bit “same-y same-y”. I wish I had a vivid fuchsia texture paste for this (like this one called Pink Flambe) or maybe a Mother Of Pearl like this one but alas I had to use a Bronze coloured one from Nuvo. Combining this mousse with the Hero Arts Long Leaves Stencil stencil I got to work with a spatula. I have been told to work quickly with this as it dries fast so I might have been a bit too hasty in my spreading but it came out ok-ish. Next time I think I will keep a damp cloth on hand so I can wipe it off as soon as I’m done. It does get into all the nooks and crannies on the stencils.
Whilst the mousse was drying, I stamped up a few images and sentiments from Hero Arts Happy Mail in Distress Oxide inks (Wild Honey, Fired Brick and Picked Raspberry) and cut these out. One of them I mounted on black card stock just a tiny bit bigger than the white card stock to create a nice frame for it. You can also use Hero Arts Love by Lia for similar sentiments.
Using foam tape I added these to the card base and then sat back and looked at it. I felt it was missing something and added a few little touches directly to the card base using the same Happy Mail stamp set.
It still looked like it needed a little something else and at this point I actually asked my husband for an opinion. Don’t laugh, he gives really good advice sometimes. Not every time mind you, but most of the time he will at least make me look at the card with new eyes and see a different way to finish it off. His advice was to add something white as it was all a bit too pink (I didn’t say he was always right, did I?? ) but I started out by filling in the word ‘hugs’ with a white gel pen. Then I drew a few lines in between the leaves and all of a sudden they ended up looking like feathers!
Like I said in the beginning, this card isn’t my favourite but I had fun making it and will definitely be using texture paste and embellishment mousse again very soon!
Are you on social media? We are! Please join us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook? so you don’t miss any fun promotions or new challenge announcements!
Please join us in this months “Watercolor” challenge for your chance at a free digital stamp AND, if you used Hero Arts, a $20 gift card to our Hero Arts store. Our current monthly challenge can always be found in the menu bar, and runs from the 1st to last day of the month
The a2z scrapbooking store carries a wide variety of Hero Arts products! Get discounted new releases, sales, grab bags & more. Proceeds from our store benefit Celiac & Behcets disease foundations. Use my discount code Erica15 to get 15% off your purchase of $25 or more. If you’re looking for a Hero Arts product you don’t see in store, use the Request Custom Order button from with-in the shop.
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