A blog named Hero 5 year bloghop

Today I'm super happy to have been invited to take part of the five year anniversary of A Blog Named Hero. Not only there's a lot of inspiration to be had but a FANTASTIC giveaway with great prizes.

I was a part of the ABNH DT something like three years ago and I really enjoyed the time on the team. When I started crafting, something like 9-10 years ago, Hero Arts was one of the first stamp companies I discovered. They just keep making fantastic stamps and products all the time and I don't think I will ever get over my first stamp love. Being a part of the team was super exiting for me. As a bonus I met so many incredible talented crafters that still keeps inspiring me. I also made a lot of great crafty friends, all of them very supportive and caring. It was a great team to be on.

I am thrilled getting to not only take part of this second day of the two day long blog hop, but also to hop through it myself and see all the wonderful projects. So let's stop blabbering and get to the good stuff.

I made this card using the Flower Garden stamp set. It's not a new set but I love it because of the many things you can do with it. I made a background using distress ink and stamped a floral pattern in gold on top. I used a diecut inlay technique with foil and glitter cardstock for the hear,t and then heat embossed the sentiment in the set on vellum. 

GIVEAWAY INFO:

A Blog Named Hero is so thankful for our wonderful sponsors and collaborating companies!  Several companies decided to help us celebrate our fifth anniversary with giveaways and they were so generous that we decided to spread the love over both hop days with different prizes to be won each day!  Giveaway prizes total more than $500!  To win, leave a comment on each hop stop.  We will select winners randomly from different blogs so the more blogs you visit each day, the greater your chances of winning!  And be sure to visit the Saturday post from A Blog Named Hero for the list of Saturday hoppers and prizes!  Comments must be left before 11:59 PM EDT on Tuesday, March 28th and winners will be announced on March 30th.

 

Today's prizes include the following: 

• $50 gift card to Simon Says Stamp


• $50 gift card to Gina K Designs


• $25 gift card to Winnie & Walter


• $25 gift card to Lawn Fawn


• $20 gift card to Avery Elle


• prize pack from Mama Elephant


• gift card from Studio Katia


• one Online Card Class of your choice


• one set of distress oxide inks from Jennifer McGuire Ink

 

 

Next stop on your way is the amazing Niki Garcia   

A Blog Named Hero  (if you get lost on your way or want to start from the beginning)

Good luck and happy hopping!!

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Merry Christmas mega post

Today is the day we celebrate christmas in Sweden so I wanted to wish you all a very merry christmas! I do it by posting all my left over christmas projects that haven't made it to the blog before. I hope you find something you like and I'm so glad you stopped by. 

These are tea bag dispensers, I learned to make them by my very nice table neighbours on the crop I went to a few weeks ago. I did a tutorial on them for the Crafters Companion UK advent calendar so If you are interested you should check out their blog.

I made this with stuff I had out on the desk one day.

This one is kinda cute, I love the bird by Winnie & Walter <3 

This is not a christmas card but I made it on the crop and thought I'd share it anyways.

I could not let the negatives go to waste when making the other card so this is a bonus one.

For a sketch challenge at the crop, I even used some patterned papers for this!

And lastly a gold embossed little thing, pretty fun with the cute pine cones!

I hope you have a wonderful holiday and get some spare time to enjoy some crafting too. 

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Happy holidays mistletoe

I was browsing the Spectrum Noir blog for old tutorials and found one on coloring on vellum by my friend Mary Dawn, using the Spectrum Noir pencils. I have done this before but got an idea to try to emboss vellum and color the backside for a soft effect. It didn't turn out just as I wanted to so I did go over the front too with my pencils. The embossed lines on the mistletoe was pretty wide and I wanted the green to show a bit more. 

I also made a background by stamping and embossing a background stamp and using the eBrush to airbrush on top of it, giving it an embossed feel. 

Colors used:
Pencils: 053, 054
Markers: DR5, DR6, DR7
Stamps:Under the mistletoe and Snowflake borders background by Hero Arts

I hope you are enjoying the holiday preparations, I'm starting to bake all the cookies today. I'm as usual a bit behind but I'll be fine. I'm not stressed out about anything at the moment and that's a nice feeling. It'll be christmas weather or not the cookies are done, right? ;) 

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Spectrum Aqua background

I've been away helping out on a scrapping event all weekend having a lot of fun and meeting a lot of creative people and I even got some time to craft myself. When I was packing my stuff I was thinking about what to bring and I decided on the Spectrum Aquas for coloring because they are easy to work with and don't take so much space in the bag. Well, it was a great thought and it would have been even better if I actually had packed them instead of just planning to pack them ;) So I arrived without anything to color with which made it hard to do anything at all so I mostly just talked with everyone and got no crafting done. 

Fortunately I made this card a while back to blog today, using the Spectrum Aquas to create a background. I embossed the background stamp with the snow flakes first, using Silver Pearl embossing powder and then I did an ink smooching technique using the Kingfisher, Marine and Sea Green Spectrum Aquas. I really like the combinations of the colors, they blend beautifully together. 

 

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Today I'm a guest at the Hero Arts blog, yay! I got to play with the very cute Scandinavian Holiday set by Lia with some really fun traditional Swedish images that was perfect for Christmas cards. I really loved those stamps and couldn't stop. I made five (!) cards in two different styles for my post. This is one of my favourites. Hop on over to the Hero Arts blog to see the rest :) I hope you like them as much as I do. 

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October challenge at Spectrum Noir

New month means new challenge at Spectrum Noir and a chance to win some fab prices. I love the challenges because they are such great inspiration. This month it's a color theme: Grey and/or orange. I have a lot of inspiration lately and made not one project but three. I started with this orange one using Aqua Tints to make a background, I used the orange from the Bright and Beautiful set and some of the yellow to make a gradient. Then I diecut the whole thing using this fantastic die by Winnie & Walter, and made sure not to loose any pieces. I puzzled it all together in a white frame and colored the flowers and the leaves with the Marigold Spectrum Aqua to match.

Then I made this one and it took me hours. I actually hand painted all of the little pieces by painting one edge of the piece with the Charcoal Spectrum Aqua marker and then adding water with a spritzer to make it blend a bit. Then I puzzled it into a frame covered in Neutral Ultra Shimmer embossing powder by WOW. Since I had no way of keeping track of what piece went where it took me a good while to put it all together but it turned out really cool!

 I painted these butterflies and background using some Aqua Tints in Black and orange and then Covered the butterflies with gold and silver Aqua Tints to make them shimmer a lot. The butterflies are by Lawn Fawn.

So there you go, one grey, one orange and one grey and orange project. I hope you get as inspired as me and have a go at the challenge. You can find all the details on how to take part here, just remember to use some Spectrum Noir products on your project. Good luck!

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This is my creation fro ABNH facebook page today. I had this great idea for a card and I tried five times and it just looked horrible. I finally admitted that I was defeated and stored the idea for future use. Instead I reached for an old favourite of mine, the circle from an older Hero Arts sed and made a focal point by white embossing it and make a colourful circle using some colors of distress ink I never combined before. It actually turned out very pretty, I just love it when new color combos work out. I added a diecut from Winnie & Walter that I covered with embossing powder to match the circle. I used some of my fav black and white paper and was so happy with the card I did a little dance in my chair. 

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Catching up!

I know nothing has happened here for the last couple of weeks. I've been on vacation and didn't remember to schedule all my own posts before leaving. So this post will be lots of photos and just a bit of text since I need to get on schedule with the regular posts and actually creating new stuff. Phew, vacation is hard work ;)

Here's a post I made for Design in Papers using some Lawn Fawn stamps and the eBrush with Spectrum Noir markers. I love those cute dogs!

Here's some cute owls I made for the A blog named hero facebook post. I cut the thought bubble from post it tape and masked to blend some ink as a background. I love the googly eyes, I borrowed some from my daughters craft box ;) 

WOW Embossingpowders did a blog hop with Viva Las Vegas Stamps and I got some amazing mixed media stamps to play with. They look so good with the embossingpowders from WOW! I made this collage styled card in all my favourite colors. I had a lot of fun making this card and I loved seeing all the inspiration from the team. Since WOW is making some changes behind the scenes some of the team are leaving after the hop and I look forward to following their new adventures around the crafty side of the web. 

I made this art journal page for CiLi in Papers using some old tags, Gesso, Gelatos and Distress paint. I wrote the text from one of my favourite songs by Pearl Jam on top of them. 

Here's another card for Design in Papers, I used a background I made with Aqua Tints and some stickers. I think it looks really fun with the pops of color with the black and white.

And here's another card made for the A blog named hero facebook page. And thats it for me today. will be back tomorrow with my regular post for Design in Papers and then another post later this week with some cards I made when I went to a crop before leaving on vacation. 

I did make one more card actually, I was super excited to be a guest at the Hero Arts blog and you can find my post here. I was so happy to have been asked and it was a treat to create for one of my favourite stamp companies :) 

I have not had a chance to thank you for all the lovely comments on the blog lately, I have been super busy but I read all comments and they make me so very happy! I'm glad some new readers have found me and I hope you will like my posts that usually are a bit less crowded and a bit more evenly spread out ;) 

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