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...