Hero Arts My Monthly Hero November Release and a Giveaway!

Hello everybody! I hope you all had a great weekend! I'm glad you're here because we are kicking Monday off with a bang! Today is the launch of the new Hero Arts My Monthly Hero Kit and it is a fun one! In case you aren't familiar with the My Monthly Hero Kit... It's a kit that comes on the first Monday of every month (unless there's a switcheroo) and has an incredibly high value but is offered at a discounted rate. This month's kit is valued at $86 but you can pick it up for just $34.99. There is a catch though... Once the kit is sold out it's gone for good. You can put dibs on a kit of your own by subscribing to receive the kit each month. Each month there are add-on products that match the theme of the kit too and subscribers get the perk of being able to add those extra products for no additional shipping costs. You can check out the entire release HERE.

This month's kit is really unique because the dies are masking dies. They cut out the coordinating images like a normal die but these dies cut right on the edge of the stamped image so there is no white border around the die cut image. This means that you can also use the dies to cut shapes out of masking paper, cover your stamped images and easily ink blend your backgrounds. I did that in the second card I'm sharing today.

I had so much fun making this first card and it still cracks me up to look at it. Can you guess what just happened beneath the mistletoe (which might actually be holly but for this card I'm calling it mistletoe)? Hahahaha! Mr. Snowman has been stealing kisses and obviously he took his snow lady by surprise. To make the snowpeople on this card I cut them both out using the dies (no stamping) and colored in all of the details with copic markers. To get the reverse image I flipped  one of them around before coloring.

I ink blended the background using my reactive inks. To create the hill I cut a stencil out of a piece of white paper and used both the positive and negative pieces to build the scene. I created a stencil using the tree die and ink blended trees on top of the blue background. Then I sprayed the upper part of the background with white irridescent shimmer spray and splattered it with white metallic ink. It's so pretty and sparkly in real life!

I heat embossed the sentiment in white on black cardstock and adhered it with foam adhesive. Then, I stamped, colored and die cut the mistletoe and adhered that so it looked like it was hanging from the sentiment strip. I adhered the snowmen below the mistletoe and used a gray copic marker to add shadows below them. The final touch for this card was to add some highlights with a white gel pen.

My second card was incredibly easy and fast to make. I started out by using my owl die to cut a mask from masking paper. If you've never used masking paper before it's a sticky paper with a backing. When you are ready to use it you peel the back off of it and stick it to your paper to create a mask. When you are done using the mask you simply peel it off. It will come up easily without leaving behind and adhesive residue. After heat embossing my owl and sentiment onto my card face in black I stuck my owl mask on top of it. This completely covered my owl image. Next, I stamped the branch so that it appeared that my owl was standing on top of it. 

I placed a piece of purple tape below the owl so that I could ink blend only the top of my card. Using my reactive inks I ink blended above the tape and on top of the mask I had stuck over my owl image. I used my lightest color behind the owl and my darkest color on the outer edge. 

When I was done ink blending I peeled the mask off of the owl and then removed the purple tape as well. This left behind a clean image of the owl that popped off the background. The last thing I did was to add color to the branch image with my copies.

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, November 8th 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
Ilina Crouse
Jessica Frost-Ballas
Lydia Fiedler
Maria Willis
Michelle Short
Mindy Eggen
Seeka
Amy Kolling
Jennifer McGuire
Julee Tilman
Laurie Willison
Mariana Grigsby
Nichol Spohr

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My Monthly Hero Countdown: Warm Wishes!

Hey everybody! It's time for your My Monthly Hero Countdown and this month's kit is so much fun! I've used just two stamps from the kit to make this simple but sweet card.

I started out by stamping the house and sentiment at the same time in versa mark ink. Then I heat embossed it all in clear embossing powder. 

Next, I masked off the sentiment at the bottom as well as the little house. This allowed me to ink blend the background with my reactive inks (Splash, Blue Hawaii and Grape Slush). I sprayed the background with shimmer spray and then splattered it with silver metallic paint to complete the wintery look. The last details were to remove the masking paper and color in the house and glue on some star sequins and clear enamel dots.

Ok, you guys, that's it for today. I hope you've enjoyed this little sneak peek of the November My Monthly Hero kit. If you want to win a kit before you can buy it then head over to the Hero Arts Blog and leave a comment so that you can enter to win!

I'll see you all back here on Monday for the full kit reveal!

Bye for now and have an awesome day!

Maria

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