Four More Accessory Challenge cards

My favorite accessories are ribbon and gems. I also like to use pearls on my cards. These simple items dress up the cards and give a little bit of elegance. I am happy the way all my cards turned out.

Another Accessory Challenge Card

Here are a few more cards that I made for the Hero Arts Accessory Challenge. I was enjoying myself making these cards and I really like to use the distressing technique on my cards. It seems that every time that I make a card, there is something on the finished card that I have distressed.

On this penguin card I distressed the sky and masked the penguin and colored his hat and scarf with copic markers. The white part of the card was embossed with an embossing folding. My embellishment was the button.

The Winner is.........

I can't believe that I won the Fresh Face award from the Hero Arts Accessory challenge. During the week of October 12th I worked very hard to get my accessory challenge cards up on the Hero Arts Flickr group. The challenge was to make Christmas cards with some type of accessory and you could enter as many times as you wanted. I got a little carried away and ended up making 10 different cards. I had no idea that I would win. I figured that there were better cards out there then my cards. When I found out that I won I got very excited and I felt like telling the world that I won. Anyway, here is the card that won.

This particular stamp set (Hero Arts) has been in my collection for at least 4 years and this is the first time that I actually used it on a project. I could never decide how I wanted to use this set, until now. These flowers were paper pieced, so that means each individual stamp had to be stamped several times. I stamped on white paper and then used Tim Holtz Destress Inks to color the flowers and their background with. The background stamp is another Hero Arts stamp: Dots and Flowers. I thought that the blue and marmalade colors would complement each other.

In the Happy Birthday card. I used the same stamps, but stamped on pattern paper instead. I used a little bit of distressing ink to take some of the brightness of the paper away. These two projects were submitted to the Hero Arts Flickr group challenge for last week. The cards were fun to make and I am pleased with how they turned out.

Thanks So Much Owl

I was at Michael's this afternoon looking for embossing powder and I ended up purchasing more stamps. I came across this Owl stamp (Hero Arts) and the first thing that I thought of is that I could paper piece this stamp. Well, I looked at a few more things and then paid for my purchase and headed home. As soon as I got home I began to put my card together. It took me a little while, but I am pleased with the results.

Card Challenge Number 3

I just finished a card for the next challenge that is being held on the Hero Arts Web site. Usually I wait to the last minute to get my chalenges finished and uploaded. This time I decided to start early in the week and I finished my card this morning. All I have to do is upload it to the Flickr group. This week's challenge was to paper piece your stamped images and make it into a card. Different sections of the image is stamped on different types of paper, then cut out and put back together. So, I tried this technique and discovered that I liked it and thought that it was a fun technique. The person who gets the credit for this technique is Tami Hartly from Hero Arts.

Here are the cards that I did for this challenge. I used Hero Arts Cling Stamp "Thinking of You".

It was fun to make and I am happy with the results.

Artist Trading Cards (ATC's)

Yesterday, I entered another challenge to the Hero Arts Blog. I am actually starting to like to do challenges. It keeps me thinking of what I want to create and how I want to put my cards or scrapbook pages together. The challenge was to create an Artist Trading Cards. These cards are 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" and you can put anything you want on the card. In this challenge you had to use at least 1 Hero Arts stamp. I ended up using 4 different stamps for such a small piece of paper. But, I think that it actually came out nice. I up loaded it to Flickr on the hero Arts Flickr group. I was amazed that a few people left some positive feedback on this card. That thrilled me and I actually got excited. I think these challenges will become attictive but, in a good sort of way. "You're Special" card was created for the ACT challenge.

The other thing that I decided to do was join a card swap and I got very excited when I found out that I was picked for the swap. Before I actually signed up for the swap I did a little bit of planning so that I could get my cards done and mailed out in a timely mannor. For the swap I had to make 10 ATC's (one for me and 9 to mail to the group hostess). (This swap is sponsored by Hero Arts.) I started working on the cards on Saturday and finished earlier today and will be able to mail them tomorrow. Another thing that is neat about this swap is that the hostess is from the area where I live. How cool is that. This may not be very exciting for some people, but for me it is. My daughter Pam has given me the inspiration to do this. For a long time I would tell myself that I can't do this. Now I realize that I can. This "Special Friend" card is the card that I made for the ATC Swap.