Hero Arts Contest

Although I've been a fan of Hero Arts stamps for a long while, and there were in fact some of the first stamps I bought, I didn't actually realise that they had a blog and challenges (Doh!)   Now I've found that they do, I thought I'd have a go at this months challenge http://heroarts.com/blogs/club/february-2012-contest-details/   There are 3 ways to enter - create a friendship/hello card, use one of the sketches below or to use some die cutting on your card.

I decided to combine all 3 ways of entering the challenge into one card and using the right hand sketch, this is what I came up with.

I started with a 6 x 4 white card and cut a piece of thick white card 1 cm smaller all around.  I die cut an aperture from it and lined it up my card.  I masked off the area on the base card around where the aperture would be and then used the first Hero Arts Clear set I bought years ago from QVC which has butterflies and florals and sentiments (sorry no idea what it was called) to create a pattern in the aperture using chalk ink on its second stamping for a really soft look.  I ran the card with the aperture through my floral vines embossing folder to add texture and used foam pads to mount for dimension.  I cut a couple of ribbons in complementary colours and stamped the greeting from the same clear set using the background ink but at full strength.

The butterfly is from my new Hero Arts/Sizzix stamp and die set (these sets are fab - very good idea to collaborate by the two companies!)  I coloured the butterfly directly on the stamp using my old whisper brush markers and then spritzed it with pearl spray to get a good stamp impression and some shimmer.  I filled the white areas of the wings with glossy accents and glimmer dust.  A few black pearls finished the body.

I'm really pleased with the outcome - I even managed to keep the white white despite the mess of ink on my hands!