Day Two of Hero Arts First Mixed Media Stamp-Along!

Hi all - thanks for stopping back! **Warning - photo heavy post ahead**

I had a crafting marathon this weekend - a Mixed Media Stamp-Along online with Hero Arts and their fabulous instructors!! We created pages for an accordion art journal - I shared my first page from the Friday night session HERE. Saturday's classes ran into the evening, then I had to watch the Twins game (beat the Athletics -yay!!) so I waited until today to blog them. Most sessions ran 90 minutes then we had a 30 minute break (1 hour for lunch most of which I used to craft). I've listed the main supplies at the end of this post.

First up on Saturday - INSPIRE page by Mindy Eggen. She used a lot of ink blending, die cutting and rub-ons with some splatter to finish it off. Here's my take on the project...I made my letters wonky so I didn't have to align them - LOL.

Next, a Life is Tough page by Nichol Spohr. Her class title was actually based on the companion card she created using others of the encouragement sentiment strips. I used different sentiments, plus created a card using the same techniques. I used seafoam white embossing powder on my flowers & leaves so they didn't stand out as nicely as Nichol's did using a brighter white ep. We randomly stamped on the flowers and leaves with a text stamp.

Next, Life is Beautiful page by Jessica Frost-Ballas. We used a ton of shimmer spray on those flowers! And since I made an extra flower, I created a card too.

Next up, Follow Your Heart page by Channin Pelletier, using lots of liquid watercolors and some white embossed dots, plus paste through a stencil.

Next - our art journal covers. For these we had a session with Mansi, a mixed media artist, who was very inspiring. Mansi went as the spirit moved her. In fact, she made a entirely different pair of covers during the session than the ones on the handout! She did not want to see us make replicas of her covers; she wanted us to play! One of her concepts is to move on from a technique after a few minutes so you don't start "thinking". We played for 90 minutes and here's my result using watercolor paper:

See the ribbon between the covers? It started white and we painted it gold with Hero Wax, then added past through a stencil for some texture. And the bottle in the upper left corner? A tonic water bottle - I used the bottom to stamp the blue dotted circles. I'd been meaning to try it on my gel plate for ages but hadn't got around to it. Finally just used it to stamp!

And here's the journal front tied with the ribbon through a gold die cut wheel. LOL - I'd meant the panel at left in the photo above to be the cover but when I glued them on, the one at right landed on the front - oops. Otherwise the ribbon wouldn't have gone round the journal!

The evening event was a recorded video from Jennifer McGuire - so inspiring! She was live in the chat but had the session recorded so she could comment and answer questions. She made some amazing cards using gel print backgrounds with mixed media. I was creating along with her using a 3x3" plate applied to a much larger sheet multiple times. When the session ended, I left my unfinished print to sit. Worked on it more this morning and turned part of it into this card:

Whew! After all that, you probably won't see me until my Diva post on the 21st (still working on my card). This month we're doing Birthdays over at Die Cut Divas so check it out!

Thanks a bunch for sticking with me & happy crafting! If you haven't tried mixed media, try it!

Main Hero Arts Stamp-Along Supplies: 

Stamps with Dies - Beautiful Day Bundle

Stamps - Encouragement Sentiment Strips,

Positive Script, & Rough Dot Bold Prints 

Mixed Textures

Stencil - Stacked Circles

Dies - Circle Set

Sentiment Strips Fancy Die

Luggage Lowercase Alphabet

Rub-ons Flowers and Swirls Hero Transfers

Other - many liquid watercolors, inks & sprays

Hero Paste, Hero Wax & Hero Pearls