Fall Inspired by Hero Arts (Projects 31, 32, 33 and 34)

Only 16 more projects before I can lift the shopping moratorium.

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I love going to the Hero Arts’ website for inspiration.  Well today's post is several cards I made that were inspired by Hero Arts cards.

 

Card 1

 

Let’s start with the inspiration piece Hero Arts Halloween Greetings which provided the inspiration for the layout and how I did the background.

For this piece, I started by stamping the acorn and leaves on a snippet of X-Press paper with Memento Rich Cocoa.  Then I colored them with Copics and fussy cut them out with my Fiskars fingertip craft knife. The image is by Inkadinkado. 

 

I don’t know about you, but white edges drive me batty when I fussy cut things out.  So I’ve got a tip for dealing with that.  After I cut the piece out, I place it on a piece of scrap paper and run a marker in the same/ similar color as the ink I stamped with along the piece.  Basically I trace the piece on the scrap paper.  That way the edges get colored.  Just be careful, I can’t tell you the number of times I slipped and add a line to the image.  Here are some before and after pictures.

Before

After

 

 

 

For the base, I took a piece of patterned paper and stamped with the background sentiment stamp by the Stampin Place with Versafine in Vintage Sepia and embossed with clear embossing powder.  I added the lace to the back of the piece and attached that to the kraft cardstock.

 

I used a Spellbinders die to cut out the piece for the sentiment.  The sentiment is by Impression Obsession and stamped with Versamagic in pumpkin spice. 

 

Copics:

Acorns -  E21, E23, E25, E27

Leaves - R05 & R08, Y15& Y17, YR04& YR18 

 

 

 

Card 2

 

With this one, I was inspired by the technique used on this really cool card.  Hero Arts Inchie Art

For this card, I took a three by three piece of cream cardstock and stamped it with the Inkadinkado flourish stamp with Versamark and heat embossed with clear powder.  Then I inked the piece with Distress Inks in Spiced Maramalde, Fired Brick and Wild Honey.  And wiped the ink off the embossed portions.  Then I cut the square into inchies (one inch square).  I took five of the inchies and added stamped images and the sentiment.  I added the squares to a kraft base.  Then I added the orange ribbon from August’s ribbon club assortment from Really Reasonable Ribbons.  I made the bow using my bow-it-all and added it with a glue dot.

 

The stamps used are:

butterflies – Stampendous

Acorn  - Fiskar

Big leaf – Fiskars

Small Leaf  – Stampendous

Fall –  Stampendous

 

Card 3

This card is my version of an absolutely beautiful card made by Jennifer McGuire. Jennifer McGuire Get Well.  You will notice that my piece is strikingly similar.  I used different stamps and different techniques but I just loved Jennifer’s piece, and as they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  Because it is so similar to Jennifer’s piece, I wasn’t going to post it but, I really like how the butterfly came out.  So I decided to share it.

To create this card, I started with two pieces of watercolor paper.  For the card base, I brayered on Distress Ink in fired brick.  Because the paper has some texture and I used the brayer to apply the ink, it created a cool effect.  I think I misted the brayer with a little water to get better coverage.  For the smaller piece, I used Spiced Marmalade and did the same thing.  I stamped both pieces with Inkadinkado flourish stamps with Memento Rich Cocoa ink.  After stamping, I used my corner rounder on the smaller piece. 

 

I inked a scrap of watercolor paper with DI in Fired Brick for the sentiment, stamped it with DI in Vintage Photo and dovetailed the ends.  I inked the edges with Vintage Photo as well.  When I attached it to the smaller piece, I put a foam square in the center and then used adhesive on the ends to glue them down. 

 

For the butterfly, I stamped the butterfly with Versafine in Onyx Black and embossed with clear embossing powder.  Then I painted the butterfly with twinkle H2Os. 

Once assembled, I added liquid pearls in Cantaloupe and Rogue.  To get them to flatten, I applied a couple of dots at a time and then thwapped (yes, I just made up that word) the card against my craft desk.  Basically, I tapped, with some force, the back of the card against my desk until I liked the look of the dots.  I figured out that given the heat in Florida, the liquid pearls start to set up fairly quickly.  So I had to apply the dots in batches or the thwapping wouldn’t work. 

 

 

Card 4

For this card, I finally gave die cut inlay a try.  I was inspired by this card: :Hero Arts Thank You Flower Branch.

I started by cutting the tag shape with my silhouette from watercolor paper and from plain cardstock.  I actually made a few of these because I donated several to Operation Write Home.   So for the first one, I cut the branch from the watercolor paper tag first and then the leaves.  But that meant when I cut the leaf that’s dangling off the branch, I didn’t get the full leaf.  So I had to re-cut it from a snippet of watercolor paper.  For the rest of the tags I made, I used the branch die to figure out the placement of the leaf, but cut the leaves first.  Hopefully that makes sense.   Then I ran the branch and leaves through my Big Kick again to emboss them.

 

I inked the background with Distress Ink in Mustard Seed.  Then I stamped the background sentiment by the Stampin Place with Tea Dye Distress Ink (I think).  I colored the branch with Tea Dye and Vintage Photo Distress Ink.   The leaves were colored with Spiced Marmalade, Squeezed Lemon, Fired Brick and Barn Door.

I then attached the watercolor paper tag to the plain cardstock.   Then I placed the branch and leaves back into the tag.   To finish it off, I added some ribbon from my stash, pattern paper to the card base and the tag on top.

I'm going to enter these over at Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 152
 

Thanks for stopping by and please come again.