Tag Archives: Hero Arts Christmas Tree

The Hero Tree revisited

I’ve mentioned previously that I was in Michaels looking for some scissors for a left hander when I saw this beautiful Hero Arts Christmas tree stamp. Because the tree is so gorgeous, I didn’t want to detract from it or have other elements fighting with it. This time I decided to heat emboss it in silver since the previous two uses had it embossed in gold. It looks as if I’ll have to try it without heat embossing too!

For my base, I used rich razzleberry – in fact this is a one layer card. After rubbing the embossing buddy over the card, I stamped the tree in versamark and sprinkled on the silver embossing powder. As an aside – whilst in Michaels, I also found an embossing tray which catches all the embossing powder and allows you to funnel the powder back into the pot. I had thought about storing the powders in plastic containers with a spoon for ease of sprinkling, but with a dozen or so powders, I didn’t want to use up the extra space. I take up enough (okay, pretty much all) of the kitchen table at the moment as it is! Stampin’ Up! used to sell one but it appears to have been discontinued. I also got a few small paint brushes which are useful for flicking off any stray dots of powder before heating and for helping the last remnants of the powder from the tray into the pot.

Hero Arts christmas tree stamp on rich razzleberry
Back to today’s card! After heat embossing the tree, I rubbed the embossing buddy on the bottom part of the card and stamped the sentiment from Stampin’ Up!’s Good Greeting set in versamark. One more sprinkle with the embossing powder and another round with the heat tool and the card is done. I could have stamped both parts in the versamark and then done just one round with the embossing powder and heat tool but I prefer to do one thing at a time when embossing.

I finished the card off by dry embossing the envelope flap with Stampin’ Up!’s northern flurry embossing folder.  The colour of the rich razzleberry is truer to life here – I need to improve my photography to get the colours better. I may even have to read the manual!

Hero Arts christmas tree stamp with embossed envelope

 

Secret Pal inspiration

This past weekend, Caro and I attended our first crop and it was fantastic fun! We made cards, met new people, deepened our relationships with others, spotted words in songs for raffle tickets, participated in swaps, played bingo, drank wine and margaritas and stayed up way too late. It was a blast. The New Jersey Crop Weekends are highly recommended. We’re very lucky in that they are at a hotel about 20 minutes from my house so it’s easy to get there – that’s not to say that we didn’t stay over – remember the margaritas? 🙂

We took part in the Secret Pal swap. The idea is that you shower your pal with gifts over the weekend and there’s a reveal on Saturday evening when you find out the wonderful person who was spoiling you. My pal was Jill. She definitely was extravagant and took the showering almost literally! One of the first gifts was a copy of Cardmaking & Papercraft, the UK’s number one crafting magazine. This confused me rather since I knew that Caro was gifting Jill and I hadn’t heard any other British accents – I later found out that Jill found this at Barnes and Noble. Anyway, I flipped through the magazine (didn’t want to waste crafting time and I can read it this week) and found an article on gold gilding. Well, I didn’t have the products but it did inspire me to take the tree stamp that I’d picked up at Michael’s and heat emboss it in gold.

hero tree gold emboss on white

The tree stamp is from Hero Arts – I posted a card with it last week. The text is from Stampin’ Up!’s The Newborn King stamp set. I really love the typeface and the simplicity of the card.I used whisper white for the stamping and matting and adhered it to a whisper white base. I like the white layer on the white card base – it looks rather classy. This is definitely a card that I’m going to be sending myself. So apologies in advance if anyone reading this gets a spoiler on their Christmas card!

Hero Arts tree

This is an unusual post for me – it’s using some non-Stampin’ Up! supplies. I am very impressed with the quality of the Stampin’ Up! supplies and also surprised, where they are available, that the prices are in line with or better than other vendors. Take, for example, the versamark ink pad. I happened to be in Michaels yesterday and noticed that they sell it for $9 something. Stampin’ Up! sells it for $7.50. Whilst I was in Michaels, I just had to look at the crafting goodies (being a left hander, I needed scissors since only the paper snips are for either hand) and I saw this stamp, made by Hero Arts and fell for it.

Hero Arts Tree stamp on garden green

I’ve stamped it on garden green card stock in versamark and then used the Stampin’ Up! gold embossing powder. I really like the total simplicity of this card. The envelope is lined using the backgrounds DSP in garden green.

Michaels also had the envelope punch board and the gift box board, both of which Stampin’ Up! offers, but they also had a gift bag punch board. I couldn’t resist. I expect that tomorrow’s post will feature the gift bags!