10 Cards 1 Kit | My Monthly Hero December 2019 Kit

Hello Folks!! Scott here with my 10 Cards 1 Kit post featuring the My Monthly Hero December 2019 Kit. Sorry this is a little tardy this month… holidays, you know! Hero Arts is celebrating the diversity of our beloved (yet stressed) planet Earth this month with this lovely 6″ x 8″ stamp set with a stunning (and large) “Earth Goddess” stamp. I think this must be the largest image stamp I’ve seen in a MMH kit in the couple years I’ve been a subscriber. Really beautiful! She is complimented with an earth, a tree, a pair of fish, a peace sign and a few sentiments sized to fit in the crook of her arm. There’s also a pair of hands, some birds, flowers and clouds to round things out.

We do get 18 coordinating frame cuts to die-cut all the images, a new Earth Palette Reactive Ink pad (LOVE IT!) and a pack of Green Biodegradable Glitter. VERY interesting! I’m tempted to toss some in a glass of water and see what happens!! Finally we are treated to five little mini brushes – I find these most useful for super small glue or paste or more permanent media details since they aren’t much good after a single use or two. Though I’m not overly thrilled with all the sentiments here, I do think this is one of the most interesting and unique kit I’ve ever received from Hero Arts!

So, of course, I just couldn’t resist grabbing that big Goddess stamp and plunging right in!

 

I stamped this (and all the other cards this month) on Bristol smooth card stock using VersaFine Onyx Black ink and I embossed this stamp with clear embossing powder. I rarely emboss stamps I’m going to color, but for some reason I thought it was very appropriate for this stamp. WOW! I LOVE the shine that gives to this entire image! I don’t know why I don’t do that more often! I reached for my Stabilo pens to color this whole image and just worked my way around from the ‘water’ to the ‘fire’. I really like how vivid those Stabilo markers are, and, with a little water, they move on the Bristol smooth card stock super easily!

I wasn’t sure what image I wanted to put in her arms, so I went ahead and stamped, embossed and colored the earth, the fish, the tree, and the peace sign in the exact same way. Of course, the earth won out..! I cut out my stamped panel with a Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle die and  glued that to a white card base. I fussy cut the Earth (the die in the kit leaves a small border around that stamp), added a little Spectrum Noir Sparkle pen to the oceans, and mounted that in her arms with some foam tape.

Wow WOw WOW! LOVE this so very much! The shine from the embossing makes her feel very ethereal, and I love the buck and deep blue oceans on the earth..! I couldn’t bring myself to add a sentiment to the front of this card, and I was in a bit of a celebratory mood after making this, so I turned to my Silhouette Software to create the sentiment on the inside. “You GO Gaia” is printed on a scrap of card stock using the Typewriter Hand font and die-cut with my smallest LFSRD. In Greek mythology, Gaia, is the personification of the Earth and one of the Greek primordial deities. Gaia is the ancestral mother of all life: the primal Mother Earth goddess. This does echo the classic “you go girl!” which made it seem all the more appropriate for this card! I LOVE THIS!

Bit of a side-bar here… After much consternation and debate over prices, I treated myself to a ream of Neenah Classic Crest Solar White 110# card stock. I have experimented with MANY heavy-weight card stocks over the last few years, and ALL were much cheaper than the Neenah… but I have to admit you get what you pay for. This Neenah card stock is smooth as butter, bright white, scores and folds beautifully, goes through my printer with no problem and it is luxuriously thick. A ream of 250 sheets stands about 3.75″ tall! All my white card bases this month (and for the foreseeable future) are Neenah!

Though I kind of felt like I had “Mastered this Kit with a Single Card”, I do have a few other ideas, and I did have three more of the round images already colored…

One of my favorite “peace” quotes of all time! I printed this sentiment on a Neenah card base using my Silhouette Software and the Typewriter Hand font again. I was very pleased that the 110# Neenah would go through my printer using my ‘piggy-back’ printing method! You can review my technique for Printing Unique Sentiments for your  cards here: https://cardcutups.com/2017/07/18/printing-sentiments-for-cards/.

I fussy cut the (stamped, colored and embossed) peace sign (very carefully) with a craft knife, and mounted it to the card front with thin foam pieces. I thought this unique stamp was cool enough to hold it’s own on the front of a card – and is very appropriate with this quote that I do attribute on the inside of the card. Plain yet powerful!

The fish stamp seemed very “Yin/Yang” to me – whether it was intended to or not, so I did color that stamp as if it was a Yin/Yang symbol – basically just reversing the colors from one fish to the other. I added a touch of light blue in the background, and die-cut them using the circle die in the kit.

Now, I have seen LOTS of spinner cards and rotating cards and window cards using this set coming from a lot of the HA design team – obviously, this kit lends itself to those type of interactive cards, but I wanted to try something just a little bit different. I stamped the hands on a piece of Bristol smooth card stock cut to 3.5″ x 5.5″ and printed this sentiment using my Silhouette Software and the Smoothie Shoppe and Arial fonts. A simple hole punched in the middle to connect the spinning wheel to the fish. I used a stitched circle die to cut the spinner and stamped the arrows using the MFT Interactive Labels stamp set, and punched a finger-notch on the left side right in line with my center hole.

I ink blended the edges of that panel with Hero Arts Splash Reactive ink and a mini ink blending tool, and added a couple strips of pattern paper (from the Sizzix Geometrics 6″ x 12″ Cardstock Pad) down the two sides of my white card base. I attached the spinner to the fish with a brad through the center hole, and used foam tape to attach the panel to the card front leaving room for the spinner to rotate. I think these fish were just begging to ‘swim around’ (pun intended!) and this is a fairly surprising and unique interactive card with a poignant and useful sentiment!

I still have that tree stamp colored, embossed and die-cut that I haven’t used yet …

And here we break into that Biodegradable Glitter! I cut a frame from some adhesive backed card stock using two LFSRDs and covered the adhesive with glitter. I burnished it down quite vigorously, but this glitter is super fine and still sheds a little bit..! I also die cut a slightly larger circle than the tree and covered that with glitter before gluing it behind my tree die-cut for a matching mat. I did print this sentiment on a Neenah card base using the Typewriter hand font and glued the frame to the card front and added the matted tree with some foam tape. Of course there is more to this sentiment than just “Be a Tree”… I printed the rest of this sentiment on the inside of the card using my Silhouette software and the same font. Very good advice for most anybody at most anytime! And I think this is particularly appropriate with this stamp that shows the roots of the tree!

We also had nine little flower, leaf and stick stamps in this kit, and I kept thinking…

I really like the hand stamps in this kit – pretty versatile – and any plant that blooms with three different flowers is damn precious!! I stamped everything using only a mask for the hand – I simply stamped all the foliage as close together as possible. I colored these with my Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers, stamped and clear embossed the sentiment (after I removed the “so take care!”) and die cut that panel with a LFSRD.

I swiped the Earth Palette reactive ink pad on a piece of Bristol smooth card stock and blended the colors together with a paintbrush and a little water – the brownish stripe behind the sentiment happened when the purple went over the light green – it matches the stick part of our ‘plant’ nicely so I let it be! I die cut the background with another LFSRD and glued it directly to a Neenah card base. I matted the image panel with a thin black mat and added that to the card front with foam tape.

Once this was all together, I felt it was still missing something, so I stamped the little bird on a scrap of Bristol smooth card stock, colored and die-cut it out. I did try to make the bird look like a Meadowlark. I like the sense of movement that comes from die-cutting the bird (when none of the other images are die cut) and I love the matching ombre background! Precious, indeed!

We also have dies for all those little incidental stamps (and hands!) in this month’s kit…

I stamped everything on Bristol smooth card stock, colored all with my Zig markers, and die cut everything with the matching dies. I stamped and clear embossed the sentiment on a Neenah card base and arranged all my die cuts on top. The foliage is glued directly to the card front and the hands and butterfly are mounted with foam tape. A thin strip cut from the scraps of my ombre background adds a final touch of color to our abundant cornucopia of nature being offered up. Fun and colorful, this is a great way to use all the little incidental stamps included with this kit. And those hands are really versatile!

Speaking of versatile, I had another interactive card idea to go along with a bit of a pun…

I stamped the hands together masking the right one before stamping the left, colored them with my Zig markers and die cut those with a plain circle die. I swiped the Earth Palette reactive ink pad on a scrap of watercolor paper and blended them out with more water – that gave me more of a ‘brush’ texture on the watercolor paper versus the smooth blending on the Bristol smooth card stock. I cut that down to a 3″ square and used my corner choppers to round the corners. Again, I poked a hole in the center of a Neenah card base, die cut a 4.25″ circle for the spinner, stamped the arrows and attached the spinner to the watercolor background through the center hole. I added the hands to the watercolor piece with foam tape, and took some thin heart washi tape from my stash to run across the top and bottom of this card front. I added a finger notch to the right side this time and attached the front panel to a Neenah card base using foam tape.

There’s the pun! (I couldn’t resist!) LOL! I printed the inside sentiment using my Silhouette software and the Henny Penny font. The Neenah card stock takes the print so well…  nice and clean and very sharp. I’m extra thrilled with this card stock knowing that I can print on it! And I really like that the whole ‘square’ rotates and I think that’s a little bit of a surprise. A great interactive congratulations card! Makes me laugh!

I can’t do 10 cards with this kit and NOT do one more Earth Goddess stamp…! Let’s try her on some Kraft card stock and break out the colored pencils!

I hadn’t used the large bird stamp or the clouds yet, so I added them to this card front using VersaFine Onyx Black ink and colored everything with my Prismacolor Colored Pencils. A little more subdued than the first card, but I think every bit as beautiful! I colored the bird in a bit of a parakeet motif and even added some of the twine along the spine tied in a simple bow. Again, no sentiment on the front, so you know I’m going to have something to say on the inside. I love this “Unleash your inner Goddess” sentiment! I printed that on a scrap of ivory card stock using the Brushgyo and Arial fonts, die cut that panel with a LFSRD and added it to the inside of the card. Another fun, colorful encouragement card for all the “Goddesses” in your life! I know there has to be a few! Though it does takes some time to color, I really love that stamp!

A lot of the ‘environmental’ sentiments in this kit didn’t particularly catch my eye – I had a hard time figuring out who I would send a card to that says “One world is enough for all of us” – a feuding neighbor? An estranged relative? A mortal enemy? Might as well try to laugh it up a little bit!

I stamped the four images and the sentiment on Bristol smooth card stock and colored them with my Zig markers and die-cut them all with the matching circle die. I did fussy-cut the earth and glued it to a thin velum mat. I used a 1″ and 1/2″ paper punch to punch out the blue and green dots using the HA Neon card stock from the October 2019 Kit. The punched dots are glued to a Neenah card base, the sentiment, tree, fish and bird are mounted with foam tape, and the earth is mounted with a double layer of foam tape. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, this was the perfect card to add some of the blue and green ‘droplet’ embellishments we got in our MMH March 2019 kit. Perfect match! But what’s the joke you may be asking? You have to open the card to see, silly! “Mulch this card” makes me giggle every time I say it! I printed this on the inside of the card base using the Marguaritas font and the Calibri font. I thought about “Recycle this card” but I think Mulch is a much funnier word! AND it also implies that we’re returning something to the Earth! Protect the Earth!

I have used all the image stamps in this kit (many of them twice!) but there is one more sentiment stamp that I wanted to use, and I’m going to go outside the stamp set (but staying with Hero Arts) for the image on my last card.

This is the Hero Arts From the Vault Earth stamp that I was so happy to receive for Christmas this year! That is one of my favorite “From the Vault” stamps that Hero Arts has re-released in honor of their 45th anniversary. (I asked Santa for this stamp long before I knew that this kit would have an earth stamp too!) I love the size of this stamp and the vintage dot patterns swirling through the oceans and land masses. This stamp is so detailed that it only needs a  little bit of color to bring it to life! I stamped that on some of my Neenah 110# card stock and colored it with my Spectrum Noir markers before fussy-cutting it out. I did trace the cut edges with my Memento Tuxedo Black Dual Marker and added some thick foam dots on the back. I stamped the sentiment on the same paper and die-cut it with the coordinating die, and inked the edges with a little Black Soot Distress Ink, and added thin foam dots behind that piece.

On watercolor paper, I created my “galaxy” using Brusho Black powdered pigments with some water, and let that dry thoroughly before ink blending in some Hero Arts Creamsicle, Blue Raspberry, and Taffy reactive inks. When that dried, I ink blended more of the Black Soot Distress ink all the way around the painted “galaxy”, and then spattered some Permanent White Gouache for the stars and then spattered some of my Spectrum Noir Sparkle pen for a little touch of glitter. I die cut the galaxy with a LFSRD and glued that to a Neenah card base, and mounted the two circles with foam tape. Now there’s a truly useful sentiment from this kit! A Valentine for your favorite astronomer, maybe? I really like this card and I love that Earth stamp from the vaults at Hero Arts!

That’s my 10 cards using the My Monthly Hero December 2019 Kit. I was tempted to throw in the towel after just five cards, but I soldiered on and am very pleased with the nice variety of cards I achieved. A sweet batch of encouragement cards with a Valentine or two thrown in for good measure! I am still impressed with that Earth Goddess stamp, and am particularly pleased with how colorful all these cards came out.

This kit is still available at Hero Arts! http://shrsl.com/21ba3  If I have managed to ignite your imagination or inspire an idea or two from you, please use my links when you go shopping at Hero Arts. It is always greatly appreciated! Thank you so much for sharing your time with me here… your support and encouragement is what keeps me inspired!

I have now actually completed a full year of MMH kits! WOO-HOO! (PHEW!) I am still enjoying my subscription, and I really love getting feedback and hearing from all the Hero Arts fans out there! Please remember to Like me, List me, Pin me, Post me, share me with all your friends (and enemies!), and remember… Its not nice to fool Mother Nature! I am sending you and yours all my best for a Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous New Year! Happy Crafting, and see you in 2020!