Hero Arts Joy To You Blog Hop + Giveaway!

Hi you guys! Today Hero Arts is having a blog hop to celebrate the 2011 Joy To You holiday catalog going up in the online store. I’m so excited to be playing along!

I had a hard time deciding what stamps to use — there are so many great ones to chose from! Finally, I settled the cling Merriest Christmas Wishes set and the Pool Designer Papers! (You know how I love pool! Oh yah!)

And here’s what I came up with!

I love playing around with solid stamps like this because there’s so many things you can do with them. You could go ahead and stamp it in a nice blue color and you’d have a sweet, tweet scene in no time. Or you could try the kissing technique. But I didn’t want to do either of those! Nope, not me. Instead, I stamped it with VersaMark ink and embossed it in clear, then colored it with inks.

Here’s a closer look so that you can see the embossing better — you gotta tilt it to get it to really show up.

And, here’s a little step-by-step on how I did it! First, I stamped the bird on new Pool Designer paper  — just love this pattern because it goes with everything. (Each pack of paper includes 12 8.5 x 11″ sheets, 4 each of 3 designs.)

Then I grabbed my sponge daubers and distress inks and colored in the bird, then wiped it off with a dry paper towel. Love using sponge daubers for coloring things like this because their small size lets you put the ink right where you want it. (Full supplies at the end of the post.)

Then I kept going and colored the rest of the scene. The embossed parts made a resist and the ink easily wiped away. To finish off the card, I just trimmed it and added it to a Pool Notecard stamped with the Tree Trunks — in Soft Pool, of course!  A little teal gems, some ribbon, and the message and I was done! (Just love all the messages in this set — especially this one.)

(Supplies:  Hero Arts Merriest Christmas Wishes set , Pool Designer Papers,  Tree Trunks, sponge daubers, Pool Notecard, clear embossing powder, and VersaMark ink. EK Success border punch. Distress inks in barn door, broken china, vintage photo, and walnut stain all by Ranger. Grosgrain ribbon from my stash. The photo overlays are from Katrina at Pugly Pixel.)

Now, remember how I mentioned a giveaway? Yep, Hero Arts is giving away a great prize (including new Pool notecards + envelopes!)! The lucky winner will be chosen on August 5th from all the comments received on each stop in the hop, so be sure to comment + visit them all!

You can comment about anything you like, but I’d love to hear about something that gets you in the holiday mood. It was 104 when I was stamping this, whew! So I listened to music and pretended like those snowflakes weren’t melting. :)

Here’s the full hop in case you’re just joining in:

• Hero Arts
• Jennifer McGuire
• Shari Carroll
• Lisa Spangler <– (you are here)
• Tami Hartley
• Kelly Rasmussen

Your next stop on the hop is the super talented Tami Hartley’s blog — she made FOUR amazing cards! Go check ’em out!

Joyful hopping,