Autumn Flowers

Hey!

I don't know about you, but I am trying to soak up a little more of Autumn before Winter really takes hold on the weather here. The weather here in the NE of the UK has gotten colder and I felt it last night as we watched the fireworks at the beach. 

Anyway, I decided to take the Hero Arts / Gina K collaboration stamp set Friendship Blooms for a spin and created a card with an Autumnal colour scheme in mind.

The detail on the floral stamp is exquisite and I reached for my VersaFine Onyx Black ink to stamp it onto some white card. It is a really big image, but I left some space for a sentiment. 

My 'go to' medium for colouring these days are pencils, I find them quick and easy. I might not be the best at colouring, but practice makes perfect, right?

As you can see I chose the grateful sentiment from the set. Also intentionally chosen with Thanksgiving in the US coming up and harvest festivals and celebrations of remembrance not far away here in the UK.

Just the one card from me today. I have so many ideas and plans for this stamp set, which I will share soon, but due to recovering from the Flu this past weekend, creativity has taken a back seat :( 

Stay warm & thanks for stopping by today!

Crafty Hugs

Bev 

Share Handmade Kindness

Hey!

I'm here today to Share Handmade Kindness with you all, hopefully it will inspire you to send out some handmade kindness to someone this week :)

This week Jennifer McGuire is celebrating 3 years of sharing handmade kindness and I thought it would be lovely to honour this anniversary too, using the Hero Arts Acts of Kindness clear stamp set and the Share Handmade Kindness fancy die.

I've a trio of cards to share using a combination of the stamps and dies seen above paired with other awesome products.

The Hero Arts Acts of Kindness clear stamp set is mainly sentiments, apart from the few heart accents. With sets like this, it can often be difficult to know how to use the sentiments in a creative way. One thing I love to do, especially with bolder sentiments is shadow stamping.

This is super easy to achieve using a stamping tool, a coloured ink and black ink. Once I stamped the sentiment I felt it needed a beautiful butterfly to accent it, I chose one from WPlus9 Beautiful Butterflies was the perfect choice.

Next, I wanted to use the 'Throw Kindness Round Like Confetti' sentiment, as I had the perfect choice of stamp set to pair it with...

I think this is the first card I have made with one of Concord & 9th turnabout stamp sets *shocked face*. Obviously the best choice was the Confetti Turnabout clear stamp set.

I used a selection of Altenew inks to stamp the confetti and then over stamped the sentiment in VersaFine Onyx Black ink. I finished the card with a small hear accent filled with glittery dimensional  drops and also added some to a few of the confetti drops.

Lastly for today I had to use the Share Handmade Kindness fancy die...

This is a wonderful sentiment in a beautiful font and I instantly thought to showcase it with the inlaid die technique. I used Hero Hues Azalea card stock and it looks shockingly pink against black. But I love it! 

I finished this card off with a sparkly embossed heart, fussy cut and adhered to the card using foam adhesive.

All the products I've used can be seen below. I hope you find some creative time today and that you are inspired to share some handmade kindness.

Crafty Hugs

Bev

Hero Arts Flower Garden Bold Prints 3 Ways & a BONUS card!

Happy Thursday!

It's Bev here again with some more Hero Arts product inspiration. I promise I will share inspiration using other companies too ;)

Today I am sharing three cards and a bonus card using Hero Arts Flower Garden Bold Prints, the whimsical floral pattern really stood out to me.

This stamp is HUGE when it comes to stamps, it's a 6 x 6" and it is a cling style rubber stamp. Before the days of using a stamping tool, this size stamp would have put me off buying it a little. However, with the use of a stamping tool, this stamps beautifully every time.

First up I chose to stamp the design in good old VersaFine Onyx Black ink. I absolutely love this black ink and other when using alcohol markers, it's my go to.

For this card I used coloured pencils to colour the details of the stamped image. With such a busy pattern I trimmed it to just over half the width of my base card and added a small sentiment from Mama Elephant - Paola's Wishes. 

The size of these sentiments are just right for a focal point on a card and I adore the script hand drawn font to them too.

Not a fan of colouring, well then how about some heat embossing. A lovely pattern like this already has impact, so some simple heat embossing in white onto some coloured card is another great option for this stamp.

I used Hero Hues premium card stock in Azalea, its a lovely bright raspberry colour, one of my favourites! I used VersaMark ink and Hero Arts Detail White Embossing Powder. 

And like my first card I added another of the sentiments from Mama Elephant - Paola's Wishes. This time heat embossed onto some black card, layered with white and adhered to the card front using foam adhesive.

Lastly I was inspired by the Autumnal weather and gave my Distress Oxide Inks an outing. This is another option for those that want a quicker option of adding multiple colours...

I started with a piece of smooth white card 10.5 x 14 cm, blending my chosen DOI colours of Forest Moss, Peeled Paint, Festive Berries, Spiced Marmalade, Fossilzed Amber & Scattered Straw from top to bottom. I then splattered it with some watercolour water that I'd left on my desk which had a little shimmer to it, a little happy accident! 

I used a MFT Stitched Rectangle Die to die cut my panel. The sentiment is from Concord & 9th Confetti Turnabout and it is stamped and embossed onto a scrap of brown card and adhered using foam adhesive. 

Now for my bonus card...

Amazingly, when I was die cutting my rectangle I actually thought about the placement of it prior to cutting! This maximised the use of my off cuts to create this card. 

The die cut frame is adhered to a kraft card base using foam adhesive and then I have added a die cut and stamped sentiment from Concord & 9th Turnabout Tool Kit.

That's all from me today, I hope I have given you some inspiration for ways to use your Hero Arts Flower Garden Bold Prints stamp and I look forward to sharing more with you next week.

Crafty Hugs 

Bev x

Products Used Available from the store...

Hero Arts Flower Garden Fancy Die Three Ways

Tara here with a quick announcement.  Unfortunatley due to changes in her family circumstances Anna has had to step away from the blog at short notice - today was going to be her last post and she was going to say goodbye in person but I'll have to do it on her behalf.  I know it's only been a short tenure but I know you've been inspired by her stunning makes.  We wish her and her family well.  

We've got Beverley stepping in to take her place for a while - you may already know Beverley as she runs her own UK based stamp brand Uniko but she's a customer of ours too and loves American brands and is looking forward to playing with them for us so I'll hand over to her for her first fabulous post!


Hello!

It's Bev here for my first Design Team post with Seven Hills Crafts, it's a honour to be here and to be able to share my love of stamping and all things paper crafts with you all.

I've been stamping and making cards for well over 20 years now and looking back all those years, my love affair with stamping started with Hero Arts products and more so when they started their blog in 2008. 

Anyway, with having a love for their products I thought it fitting to use them in my first post here. I instantly fell in love with the Flower Garden Fancy Die and couldn't wait to combine it with my favourite colours of  their new Hero Hues Reactive inks.

The Flower Garden Fancy Die is 10.5 x 13 cm perfect for filling the front of a standard C6 size card, though I've made my base card slightly larger (11x14cm) as I wanted a nice black border.

I started out blending four colours of the Hero Hues Reactive inks, Lemon Drop, Key Lime Fizz, Pool Party & Berry Smoothie. These are my 'go to' colours when starting a new ink collection as they blend and work nicely together. The ink format and consistency is much like the Distress Oxide Inks and blend just as smoothly. 

Now the Flower Garden Fancy Die is stunning. So beautifully detailed that with my first card I simply die cut it from white card and adhering it to my ink blended panel using Hero Arts Precision Glue. 

Not to take focus from the die and rainbow of colours I kept the sentiment simple, using partial stamping of them from Altenew's Geo Frames clear stamp set.

For my next card I decided to create another ink blended background and this time I die cut the Flower Garden Fancy Die from it...

And just look at how those colours pop against the black card base - yum! Again I kept the sentiment simple, this time choosing the Congrats from Concord & 9th Everyday Bouquet Turnabout Tool Kit (I'll be sharing more on this in a later post). 

I've used foam adhesive to adhere the sentiment and I added some small embellishment to the flower centres using dimensional drops.

I couldn't stop at two cards, so for my last card I used the die as a mask to blend over the top of and to give you another way of using your dies.

I used some thin scrap card to die cut my mask and I used some temporary stencil adhesive to adhere it to my card panel. 

I felt this method gave a softer appearance of the blended colours and so I used a sentiment from Hero Arts Acts of Kindness clear stamp set, stamped in VersaFine Onyx Black ink. I almost always use VersaFine Onyx Black for my sentiment stamping, it always gives a nice crisp impression. 

That's all from me today, I hope I have given you some inspiration for ways to use your large fancy dies and I look forward to sharing more with you next week.

Crafty Hugs 

Bev x

Products Used Available from Seven Hills Crafts...

African sunset with ink blending.

Hello everyone!

 It's Thursday and I'm back with another project. 

Today's card is clean and simple, made with Hero Arts " Wild about you " stamp set and ink blending technique along with a little bit of masking.  

My first step was to create a mask. I used masking paper and my largest roll of tape ( eg. double-sided tape ) to trace a half-circle. After cutting it out, I adhered the negative part to my card front.
I also made sure that the bottom edge of the card is covered, so I wouldn't get any unwanted ink there.

For ink blending, I have chosen Distress oxides in warm yellows. I wanted to achieve the look of an African sunset.
 I decided to use "Wild about you" set from Hero Arts because of its silhouette images. They seemed perfect for what I wanted my card to look like. 

This set is packed with lots of different animals and a few great sentiments ( I'm planning to use them again soon, for simple backgrounds, stamped in different colour inks).  I stamped a few images in to piece of white paper with black ink and cut them out. 

My next step was to adhere all the images on to the background with foam squares. I definitely wanted to add some dimension here, but this would be a great design for one layer card too.
I also added a few birds - I stamped them directly on to card panel and sentiment from the same set.
 

That's it! This card was so easy and quick to make, but I love the final result! Sometimes the simple, the better. 

See you soon! Anna