Hero Arts: Put a Flower On It

Hey Everybody! Happy weekend to you! I'm here today with a quick post so that I can play along with this month's A Blog Named Hero challenge: Put a Flower On It.  I was so excited when I saw this Mum stamp come out in Hero Art's recent spring release. They've got some other mum stamps that I love that are wood block... I'm a cling/photomolyer lover so you can imagine how happy I was to see this stamp released in photopolymer as part of their Hero Florals line (DC235). 

I started by heat embossing the flower image in gold on watercolor paper. Then I watercolored using pink and yellow which blended together to give me some fun orange and peach tones.

I watercolored the background piece in blue and then splattered it with ink. I used sparkly embossing paste and a Tim Holtz stencil (THMS106) to create a subtle but fun, textured background.

My sentiment comes from Simon Says Stamps Mom's Clematis set and is heat embossed in silver on vellum (isn't that font gorgeous?!). Finally, I finished the card off by adding clear embellishments that I colored blue with an alcohol marker and some some sequins.

You can check out this challenge or play along by heading over to the A Blog Named Hero Challenge Blog by clicking HERE or on the graphic below. There is some great inspiration from the design team so I hope you'll head over there.

Ok, that's all for now! I hope you all have an amazing weekend and I'll be back tomorrow with some Mother's Day fun.

Bye for now,

Maria

E-mail: mariawillis@hotmail.com

Creating Kindness Blog Hop: Texture

Hello and welcome to this month's Creating Kindness (Around the World) Blog and Video hop (yes, we really have a video hop on YouTube)! If this is your first time to my blog, my name is Maria Willis, and I'm a Stampin' Up Demonstrator from a small mountain town called Boulder Creek, CA in the United States. I'm so glad to have you here. Today our theme is "Texture" and our design team has done our best to bring you some creative ways of adding texture to your own crafting projects.

For my card I decided to use Stampin' Ups! new Embossing Paste. It's great for adding texture to any project. I decided to keep my card simple to let the medallion pattern and vibrant colors take the spotlight. On this card I used a color combination of Daffodil Delight and Bermuda Bay. 

I used Basic Black cardstock in hopes of having the colors boldly pop off of the page and I like the way it turned out. After applying the paste and letting it dry I used sponge daubers  to apply color. The sponge daubers allowed me to apply the color lightly or heavily as I pleased. It also turns out that black is a good color to use as a background for this embossing paste as it provides a very forgiving background.

What you cannot see in my photos is how sparkly these cards are in real life. After sponging them with color I painted them with Clear Wink of Stella. They are so sparkly and pretty! If you're interested in seeing what they look like when the Wink of Stella catches the light I hope you'll check out my video.  In my video I've got some tips for keeping your background and edges clean as well as how to care for your embossing paste tools. I also show the full process of how to make these cards with measurements included and helpful tips along the way.  Here's a link to the tutorial video:

If you watched the video you saw that the card I featured today is actually the second card  that I made using this technique. The first card was more of an experiment that started with spritzing color onto the embossing paste (it worked but the color faded over the course of the week). Once I realized that the color was going to fade with the spritzing technique I decided to try with sponge daubers and I was able to get much more saturated color with this technique. The Clear Wink of Stella is a fun addition but not just because it sparkles. In the video you can see that the solution in the Wink of Stella helps to drag the ink color around blending the colors seamlessly.  Here's a look at both of the cards. My original card was done with Lemon Lime Twist and Island Indigo inks.   The colors aren't all that different but the Daffodil Delight and Bermuda Bay card is a lot more vibrant.

If you're interested in creating texture on a project without using embossing paste then check out my post from yesterday. Here's a link and a sneak peek... just click HERE.

That's it for today folks! I hope you'll keep on hopping along with us to see the amazing ideas the rest of the design team has to share. Next you'll be heading over to Satomi Wellard in Japan!

Thanks for stopping by and have an amazing day! 

Maria.

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