Hero Arts Anniversary Blog Hop Day 1 + GIVEAWAY

Hero Arts is celebrating 45 years in business! What an amazing company that has had a strong impact in the lives of so many artists! I'm so honored and excited to be a part of their  Day 1 Anniversary Blog Hop to celebrate both their 45th anniversary and their new catalog launch! If you've already been hopping along, you should have arrived from Jessica Frost-Ballas' blog. If not, be sure to head to the Hero Arts blog to start at the very beginning (a very good place to start)!

Hero Arts is truly a rock solid family owned business that could be synonymous with the word generosity, both in stamp land and the community beyond. I feel so blessed to be able to work with them! My first memory of Hero Arts was a tiny little stamp that had little hearts surrounding the words handmade with love. For years and years, I stamped the back of each card with that stamp. And I think practically every birthday card I sent from 1999 - 2007 was stamped with the May your birthday be as special as you are script sentiment stamp. Truly classic stamp designs that I saw last week are still sold at my local JoAnn Fabrics. A testament to their timelessness!

It's an epic three day blog hop with more than $1400 in prizes up for grabs from Hero Arts and their industry friends and partners! Plus an amazing list of artists to visit, so be sure to check out all the hop and sponsor info at the end of this post!

The Summer 2019 Catalog products officially launch today. I literally squealed in delight when I saw that an entire line of reactive inks was being released! As many of you know, I was smitten with the ones included in the March My Monthly Hero kit. For my post, I immediately thought about creating a galaxy background with the new inks, so selected some colors and stamps that I thought would work with a galaxy theme and got to work.

And no sutprise, I absolutely LOVE these reactive inks! I made several fantastic backgrounds in a matter of minutes, just playing around and testing them out, then got to work on my galaxy using Berry Smoothie, Pool Party, Blue Hawaii and Grape Slush. These inks blend so easily and I loved the way my galaxy came together.  I used water, as well as black and white liquid watercolors and some pewter glimmer metallic ink to give that starry illusion. Here's the finished background before I started adding stamps. Love how that glimmer metallicink shines!

The girl and balloons images are from the Dream Big set. I quickly did another galaxy background and embossed the balloons in silver onto it, then cut with the coordinating Dream Big Frame Cuts. The girl is watercolored with the same colors of reactive inks. I always smile when I drop my boys off at school and see so many kids their colorful hair styles, so decided to give her a fun hair color.

The sentiment is from the beautiful Dreams Are Made set. I embossed it in silver on vellum and cut it out with the Circle Infinity Dies for a moon kind of feel.

I continued on with my space theme, this time choosing to make a galaxy background with just the blue hawaii and pool party inks. I loved the there's always space in my heart for you sentiment from the Dream Big set, so embossed the sentiment in white and cut with Nesting Oval Infinity Dies. I then cut another oval from the same background and decided to pull in the heart constellation image from the Lucky Star set.  To finish off the sky scene, I embossed star images from Dream Big and Dreams Are Made, then sponged around the edges of both ovals with navy and matted with nautical cardstock.

The background for the card is smooshed with the same two inks, then I finished off with the boy image and some stars from the Dream Big set.

I still had one more background left from my earlier play, so decided to make another card.

The dreamy purple and aqua combo made me think of the Fairy Window Fancy Die, so I pulled it out, cut from Paradise cardstock and then coated with the new Clear Embossing & Watermark Ink and embossed with Sparkle embossing powder. I then embossed the to sleep perchance to dream sentiment from Dreams Are Made directly on the background and layered it together on dimensional foam to finish things off.

I hope you've enjoyed the cards I've shared today. All the product links are at the end of this post. But wait, there's a whole lot more in store along the hop! Check the sponsored prize list and the Day 1 Hop List below.

I couldn't find any of my old Hero Arts wood stamps, and didn't take photos of my early cards, but some of my very first cards posted online used Hero Arts stamps.  Just for fun, here's a little slide show of some of my  Hero Arts cards from the past, circa 2006-ish. From humble beginnings, right?

Your next stop is the queen of coloring, Kathy Racoosin.

Sponsors and Prize Info:

Winners will be drawn from people who leave comments along the blog hop over the three days - comment all three days for more chances to win! Comment by Sunday, June 2 at 11:59pm PST. Winners will be announced on the Hero Arts blog the following week.

Hero Arts: 3 $145 Gift Certificates, 3 $45 Gift Certificates
Altenew: $50 Gift Certificate
Art Impressions: $25 Gift Certificate
Ellen Hutson LLC: $50 Gift Certificate
Gina K: $100 Gift Certificate
Jennifer McGuire Ink: $100 Hero Arts Gift Certificate, 5 Share Handmade Kindness goodie bags
Laurie Willison: 2 Card Hanger Dies
Lawn Fawn: $50 Gift Certificate
My Sweet Petunia: 1 Prize Bundle (Original MISTI, a set of Creative Corners, a Cut-Align, and a bar magnet)
Online Card Classes: 5 spots in the Stamp Happy In Good Company: Hero Arts class
Pink Fresh Studio: $45 Gift Certificate
Scrapbook & Cards Today: 3 copies of Scrapbook & Cards Today Summer 2019 Issue
Scrapbook.com: $50 Gift Certificate
Simon Says Stamp: $50 Gift Certificate

Day 1 Hop List

Hero Arts
Caly Person
Debi Adams
Ellen Hutson LLC
Emily Midgett
Ilina Crouse
Janette Kausen
Jessica Frost-Ballas
Julee Tilman ✋That's me!
Kathy Racoosin
Libby Hickson
Mariana Grigsby
May Sukyong Park
Michelle Short
Yana Smakula

Thanks for stopping by! Happy hopping!

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