Hello everyone and Happy New Year! I am back with my first post for 2019 for A Blog Named Hero. We have a brand new challenge for you, this month it's all about your choice. The theme for the month is 'Crafter's Choice'
You are free to create any themed project as long as Hero Arts products are in focus.
Here's what I made
I'm not so happy with the card photo but unfortunately, I spilled water on the finished card right after I took this photo so I can't take another one. In fact, I managed to spill water on 3 finished cards which I meant to send out yesterday....sigh...
I've used the Hero Floral Rose Stem stamp set which I've colored with TomBow makers and Derwent Inktense colored pencils.
Hope on over at the A Blog Named Hero blog for more gorgeous inspiration from my teammies. Don't forget to link up your Hero Arts projects, we love to see what you create!

Supplies Used:

Now onto my card, this is my second card for the Online Card Class Water Color for Card Makers. 

It is based on the first lesson taught by Dawn in the class. Though I did try out a few other techniques taught in class, I haven't made any more cards, and I haven't got a chance to watch all the session too :(

For this card I traced out the hearts from a heart die-cut, the die is from an old sizzix heart die. I then water colored the hearts. The sentiment is from Jane's Doodles "Love" set.

Playing along the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge - Love is in the Air - Use Red.

Thanks for visiting!

Playing along these challenges:

Freshly Made sketches 203

Hello Everyone,

Happy Thursday! Hope you're having a great week. As some of you must be aware we moved to Singapore a couple of weeks back, we've been busy finalizing an apartment and a school for my daughter.

The weekend's already started in Singapore, 7th to 10th are public holidays as it's the island's 50th Birthday on the 9th of August. It happens to be my birthday too on the 9th (not my 50th though! :P) so the whole of Singapore would be celebrating my birthday...wink wink. Now that our apartment's finalized we'll be going for some furniture shopping over the weekend other than catching some awesome SG50 fireworks.

A very good video tutorial on how to make a 6"x6" heart explosion card can be found here....the card is made out of one sheet of 12"x12" paper in this tutorial, since it is not possible to get a 4'x4' sheet of paper (well not usually atleast :) ) I followed a slightly different approach..........so here goes my tutorial...

CAUTION: This is a picture heavy post.

You will need:

4 sheets of medium thickness chart paper (preferably black)

Patterned paper - I used about 20 sheets of 12"x12" patterned paper (I know that a lot!)

Cutting mat, paper cutter/craft knife, Glue (I used fevicol MR), scissors (ofcourse :P )

Distress ink (I used vintage photo)

Paper distresser 

Shimmer sprays in shades of brown and gold

Sprayer/mister filled with water

Big Heart Template

To begin with I drew and cut out 4 hearts measuring approximately 2'x2' from the 4 sheets of black chart paper.  Fold the chart paper in half along the longer edge and draw half a heart and cut the folded heart to get a symmetric heart - Pic 1
2 hearts like the one shown in picture 2, fold and press these in the center to get a good crease
and 1 heart with 2 extra flaps as shown in picture 3 and 1 heart with the extra flap on only one side (forgot to click a picture of this heart :( )

Lay the 4 hearts as shown in photo 4, with the hearts with flaps alternating with the hearts without flaps. Apply glue onto the flaps and stick to the hearts without flaps (one edge of one of the hearts will be open).
Fold along the white arrows on pic 5, and the base of your card is ready.

Now we have to cover it with patterned paper. Apply glue at the lower part of the front cover heart as shown in pic 7 and stick a 12"x12" of patterned paper on it, cover the remaining heart also with PP (pic 8), let the PP spill over the heart.
Once the PP is stuck properly, turn the heart over and place over a self healing cutting mat and cut off the extras with a paper cutter/craft knife (pic 9)
Open up the card and repeat the same steps for the 4 hearts on the inside, pics 10, 12.
Pic 11 shows the inside of the card entirely covered with PP.
As is visible from pic 13, the edges of the hearts do not look very neat, that's because I didn't do a very good job with the craft knife.......no worries, I'll just just go over all the edges with a paper distresser to get a nice worn out, vintage look (pic 14)
Now that our card is covered with PP on both sides we can have some fun with shimmer sprays. I used shimmer and antiquing sprays in shades of brown (pic 15)
Cover the entire card inside with the shimmer (pic 16)
Once you are satisfied with the shimmer coverage, take one heart at a time and spray plain water onto it, spray water till all the shimmer and antiquing inks start dissolving and mixing into each other, hold the heart up as shown in pic 17 to let the colors run into each other.
pic 18 shows the card after mixing all the colors with water, once dry distress the edges with Vintage Photo Distress ink (pic 19)
I didn't spray the outer side of the card with the shimmer sprays but just distressed the edges (pic 20)
Now my card is ready to be embellished.......
Remember to not embellish the folds on hearts 1 and 2 on pic 19 otherwise you will not be able to close the card shut.
and here's what the completed card looks like...
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Please feel free to write to me at juhi.handmade.cards@gmail.com for any queries, I would be happy to help.