Story Challenge

The challenge last week at the Hero Arts blog was to create something telling your story by using Hero Arts stamps. It was definitely a challenge. First I had to find stamps that I felt represented me AND were made by Hero Arts. Then I had to piece together a collage. I love looking at collages but don't have much experience making my own.

I am a voracious reader, so I wanted to include books in my collage. I don't have a HA book stamp, so I decided to use pages from a book. Yes, I defaced a book for this project. Would it help if I said it wasn't a very good book? I took one page and spritzed the entire thing with gold Glimmer mist. I then took a second page and tore it into smaller pieces. I colored half of the pieces with a green Copic marker and half with a blue marker. The Copics worked well because they let the print show through the color. I glued the colored pieces randomly onto the shinny gold page and let it dry. I left some of the gold uncovered so that I would have parts of the paper that were gold, parts that were blue, and parts that were green. I then stamped the "L," the heart, and the butterfly onto the paper using black Versafine ink. I cut out each of the elements and glued them onto my card.

The map on the card was stamped onto clear vellum using blue Staz On. I cut out a compass from printed paper and glued it under the vellum so that it became part of the map (it is located underneath the flower). I enjoy using this technique on my cards. I love the effects you can get by letting interesting papers show through vellum. My advice is to try out a piece of vellum over all kinds of paper to see what shows though well. It is hard to predict just by looking at the papers. You really need to use a trial-and-error with the vellum in hand.

It ended up being an interesting challenge. I spent a LOT more time thinking about the project than actually stamping the card!