Hero Arts 50 Grand

Hi! Can you believe the weekend is over? I can't. Where did it go??? Yes, we moved our clocks ahead today, but it feels like I lost more than an hour. I'm not ready for Monday morning at all. Anyway, enough whinging about that!

Here's a card I made for the Hero Arts 50 Grand celebration. Their flickr group had close to 50,000 posts, so they are doing a giveaway and here is my entry. I stamped that lovely butterfly collage (Hero Arts) on a piece of paper I'd made a while ago using Adirondack colour wash sprays and pickling salt on watercolour paper. The salt is what gives those neat knobbly effects. I don't remember what colours I used, but pesto, lettuce and a watered-down denim spring to mind. There may have been mushroom and butterscotch too, but I can't really remember. It's going to be different every time anyway.

I stamped the image using the Fiskars board with sponge feet and it did a great job! I needed to spray the cling part of my stamp with window cleaner and wipe it off, since that is the only way I've found (thanks to Kim for the tip) to get Hero Arts stamps to stick to the blocks. They have the stickers on the backs that interfere with the cling. So I stamped it with black pigment ink and heat embossed in black and then stamped the big butterfly the same way on plain watercolour paper. That one got cut out and painted with (8!)Distress Inks and a coating of light blue Twinkling H20 for some shimmery sheen. (Distress inks used: Stormy Sky, Faded Jeans, Forest Moss, Pine Needles, Chipped Sapphire, Dusty Concord, Walnut Stain, Rusty Hinge - I am a hopeless case!) Then trimmed the image, mounted it on black, mounted to a piece of Spring Moss (? the light green PTI paper) card, trimmed to a 5x7 folded card base. The thank you is also Hero Arts, stamped a little too high, so the black dots were dotted in to "bring it down" visually. Then everything was happening at the bottom of the card so I fooled around for a long time with fibres and bows, etc. I settled on these two fibres from my stash knotted and glued down. I think they do a reasonable job of balancing all the action in the bottom part of the card, but still linking them visually. Doubtless there is an artsy term for this, but I just call it gut-feel.

Well, I am back to the stamp table. I want to do the Darkroom Door ATC swap this month since the next few coming up I don't have the stamps for. This month is Filmstrip theme and there were lots of lovely filmstrips in my box. I am doing an alcohol ink background since I took a class at Heather's Stamping Haven on Saturday and got all re-inspired to use those with a new (to me) technique. (Thanks Fran!)

Thanks for stopping by!