Welcome to my stop on the Hero Arts 45th Anniversary Celebration Bloghop! There aren’t many things that last for 45 years – in crafting especially! Some of my earliest stamps were Hero Arts ones – oh the memories….and they’re still in business all this long time later! See more details about the hop at the end of this post, as well as the link to see who’s next; it’s a 3 day hop so you might want to have a cup of coffee handy for hopping along!

They sent me one stamp set and its dies from their “from the vault” collection of older designs – and do you think maybe they know me a little, by choosing Cute Animals for me to color?? Whee! I combined them with some Acetate cards that have been collecting dust on my shelf….they’re always a fun way to add something super special to a card.

Today’s cards answer a question that comes up about coloring: do I color up to the edge of an image, and how do I do it without the marker blobbing at the edge where I stop? Well here’s a different way for scene-makers to color without that blobby line – just add the stamped image later on. I decided to spend *all*day*long* coloring for this post, though only had the camera on for one of the backgrounds. See pics of the rest of them all below the video!

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Watch the video below or click HERE to see it in HD on YouTube.

Wasn’t that fun? Hopefully it gives another idea for a way to add a scene without having to “stop” your marker stroke when you reach an image – just keep going, and add the image on the front of the acetate! You can certainly add a diecut directly onto the image, too – but the acetate gives it more of a “reason” to be glued on top. And you can also change up the colors from one fall class to make a year’s worth of tree scenes!

Coupon code for classes

If you’re new to me on this hop, HI! I’m Sandy and I love to color SO much that I started a teaching site – Copic classes are of course available as I talked about in the video; but you can learn about colored pencil and watercolor – or drawing classes, Bible Journaling and some inexpensive and super fun art classes for kids. Poke around and you might find something that’ll make your heART happy! And just for fun – I added a coupon code just for blog hoppers…yep it’s our little secret: use code hero to get 10% off adult classes throughout Memorial Day weekend!

The rest of the cards

See the captions below each card with a little more about each one and which class you can learn that background technique.

With this style of card, you can color your heart out on the scene without your marker needing to stop at the edge of the stamped image, thus pooling ink up along that edge.
Frog Card uses a lesson from Autumn Scenes class – a hillside full of fluffy trees in front of a lake with reflections of those trees. The reeds were just made with a dark marker, drawing in a long tall stem and adding a squiggle at the top for each reed.
I’ve created wood elements in a ton of YT videos – there’s THIS one with a wooden wall. You might also consider the Copic Hex Art class, which has wood and 41 more textures you can learn in one class.
Another autumn Scenes lesson – I arranged the trees differently and changed their colors, and added some grasses so the bear had somewhere to sit down.
Blue Skies classes can be taken in Copic or Watercolor (individually or a combo). My poor crooked sentiment wasn’t helped much by my swoop with a black pen, was it? Agh! But I do have relatives who won’t even notice.
Another Blue Skies scene over the plains for this sweet lion.
For a background like this, I refer you to the recent Rose Garden video on YT- very similar idea!

Bloghop!

As always, bloghop celebrations have not only massive creativity to inspire you, but also a huge list of prizes – so you’re going to want to join in on this one! 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, and they will announce the winners on the Hero Arts blog the following week.

PS: Don’t forget: on my teaching site, you can use coupon code hero for 10% off through Memorial Day weekend on all adult classes!

The next stop on the bloghop is Simon Says!