Hero Arts My Monthly Hero Kit January 2021 and a Giveaway!

Hi everybody and happy Monday! I'm glad you are here because today the first My Monthly Hero Kit of the year is releasing and it is amazing! 

This kit is possibly my favorite MMH kit of all time! I could not stop making cards with it so I've got five cards to share with you today and I'll have more in the coming days. I have used some of the add-ons in my cards today but I'll have more of those in separate posts as well. Make sure to check back in here if you'd like to see those. For my first card I decided to watercolor the large floral image. I stamped it in INTENS-ified black ink (good for both watercoloring and copic coloring) onto Arches cold press watercolor paper. I also stamped a bunch of the chubby bees (three or four of each) too.

I watercolored with my Daniel Smith watercolors and cut the bees out with the coordinating die cuts. I stamped the sentiment using my Misti.

I don't have the honey lacquer that comes with the kit but I wanted to add some "pollen" to my card. I used some gold Nuvo drops to add little dots everywhere. I think that you will get a similar affect using the lacquer that comes with the kit.

I used foam adhesive to adhere my bees to the card and that was it!

Now, if you visited my blog yesterday for the countdown then you've already seen this next card. I did promise that in today's post I'd let you know how I made this grungy card. I started out with a piece of watercolor paper that had a light watercolor wash of yellow and orange. Once it was dry I inkblended some Butterbar and Tangerine ink over the top in random splotches. Don't worry about doing perfect ink blending because we're going for grunge! Next, I grabbed the new Peek-A-Boo Honeycomb Fancy Die and use it as a stencil (yep, think outside the box and get the most you can out of all of your products) to ink blend some brown hexagons randomly onto your background.

Next I stamped the hexagon outline stamp from the kit in black ink. I stamped it randomly all over the place using an acrylic block. My stamping was not perfect. I used a black sharpie to color in some of the hexagons. Next, I stamped the same hexagon outline stamp using Versamark ink so that I could heat emboss. Note that I didn't bother using an anti-static tool as it doesn't matter if you get embossing powder all over the place with this technique. It actually looks cool with random specks of embossing powder. I used Sand embossing powder. This is probably my favorite embossing powder for grungy backgrounds because it has multiple colors of metallic powder in it (this results in a variety of metallic colors being embossed and it looks amazing). The embossing powder also has different sized powder granules which really adds to the texture on the card.

To finish off the background I ink blended the edges in Cup O' Joe ink and a darker brown ink. Then I dragged my black ink pad around the edges to really darken it up. This might sound scary but don't worry about messing it up. The whole thing with grungy backgrounds is that you are making a beautiful mess. Just try to make sure that you have areas of light and dark so that you have contrast. the last thing that I did was to splatter the backgroud with gold ink from my Midas Touch pen.

To finish the card off I added a gold embossed sentiment on black cardstock cut with the new Hexagon Infinity dies. Then I added some chubby bees (leftover from my first card) with foam tape and, that was, that!

For my third card I again watercolored the floral stamp. I didn't like the way the bottom of my painting came out so I cut it off. 

I splattered some blue cardstock with Metallic white ink and added a frame that I created with the rectangle infinity dies. My flowers were adhered to the top of the card using foam adhesive.

I cut the "thinking of you" sentiment out three times from white cardstock and once from the yellow glitter cardstock that came from the kit. I glued the layers together and then glued those to my card front. I added some sequins to finish the card off.

My next card is a much more simple card. I splattered an A2 sized, black card base with gold. Then I cut a rectangle out three times in yellow cardstock and once from black. I glued the layers together and adhered them to the card base. This gave a subtle but fun look because you can see the yellow layers from the sides.

I heat embossed my sentiment and added the bee with foam tape.

I finished the card off with some black enamel dots. Here's a closer look at the yellow layers of cardstock that you can see from the sides of this card.

I almost forgot to mention that I added some of the honeycomb die cut from the kit to the bottom of the centerpiece to trim it out.

For this next card I started out by ink blending the background in Splash and Blue Hawaii inks. Then I sprayed it with White Iridescent Shimmer spray and splattered it with White Metallic Ink.

While that dried I cut some flowers out of white cardstock using the new Bees and Flowers Fancy Dies. I also cut some out of gold mirror cardstock that had adhesive paper on the back (meaning that my little gold bee is a sticker). These flowers are so beautiful! I colored the flowers in with my copic markers but they have so much detail that they are beautiful even just cut out of white. 

After stamping my sentiment (Bee and Flowers Wreath stamp set), cutting it out, and coloring yellow around the edges... I glued all of my pieces onto my card.

Here's a look at what comes in this mont's kit. It comes with the main stamp set and coordinating dies, the hexagon window die, three sheets of glitter paper and a honey lacquer pen. Such a fun kit!

Ok, that is it for me today but before we go I want to make sure you know about the giveaway...

GIVEAWAY: Hero Arts will give away one $50 gift card, drawn from the comments left across the hop. Enter by Sunday, January 10th at 11:59pm pacific, and the winner will be announced on the Hero Arts blog the following week. All you need to do to enter is leave me a comment below.

To continue on the hop you can head over to Michelle's blog to see what beautiful things she's made with this kit. If you prefer to see the whole list of blog hoppers I've got that listed for you below.

Have an awesome day!

Maria

BLOG HOP LIST: 

Hero Arts
Channin Pelletier
Dana Joy
Daniel West
Debi Adams
Emily Midgett
Ilina Crouse
Jessica Frost-Ballas
Lydia Fiedler
Maria Willis: You are here.
Michelle Short
Mindy Eggen
Pocono Pam
Seeka
Nichol Spohr
Jennifer McGuire
 

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