The Most Beautiful Day

I am bringing you an antidote to our cold, rainy weather we've been having lately - with some GORGEOUS flowers and a fun blog hop.

My friends at Hero Arts are releasing their April My Monthly Hero kit today and it's SPECTACULAR, so I'm joining some of my buddies in a little hop and giveaway to celebrate some spring stamping fun.

I almost fainted when I found out that this kit comes with - wait for it - a CUSTOM Daniel Smith watercolor dot card with colors designed for these stamps. I seriously wanted to just stare at them instead of using them - his watercolor is just divine. The colors were chosen perfectly, IMHO for very realistic rendering of these beautiful botanicals in the kit. I fell in love HARD with Quinacridone pink, which I used on my sample, along with Quinacridone Violet, Green Gold and Serpentine Genuine. The violet is especially beautiful for shading both the pink and the greens. I stamped it first in a light pink from an earlier kit, so that the outlines wouldn't show - that allowed me to stamp images on top of each other without worrying I'd see the lines crossing over after they were painted.

The dot cards already indicate the transparency for you, so if you use Dawn's swatch exercise from the Online Card Classes Intermediate Techniques watercolor class, you will already have that info for these watercolors and won't have to guess. I HIGHLY recommend that class if you like watercolor.

I stamped it on Strathmore Ready Cut cold press watercolor cards - I like these because they start at 5x7, so they are fun for little field sketching or a perfect for cutting down for a card front, and they are 100% cotton, so high quality and a nice white.

I chose just the smaller buds, because I thought they were so realistic and beautiful - I'm so ready for my roses to bloom. I saw my amaryllis peeking out at me this morning through the gloom.

I cut this down to a 4 bar size and then mounted it on a Melon Mambo card base, stamping the sentiment from the set in Versafine with my Mini MISTI - so I could stamp it three times and get it perfect on that bumpy watercolor paper. Oh, how life-changing that is.

Since it was so gloomy today - I tried out my new toy - the Foldio lightbox. I'm in LOVE! It lights the card so evenly! Normally I take my card photos outside but all this rain is putting a hitch in my get-along.

I couldn't believe the ingeniousness of the magnetic folding assembly of this simple box and how much white, even light is generated by the little LED strips. I'm extremely impressed. I believe this product started as a kickstarter too - I love that. Beautifully done, and I'm really happy with it. The light was so perfect it made me want to put some pretty objects in with the card a la Debby Hughes, but I knew I'd screw that all up, so I didn't.

Now I just have to figure out how to keep the cats away from the backdrops that come with it.

So check out everything that comes in the kit - the dies cut out each layer of that larger flower, and you'll see what that looks like farther down in the hop. There are notecards, pearls, and the beloved Daniel Smith dot card AND a water brush. This month they also have some optional add-ons for Mother's Day, which is fun.

And because they are nice people, everyone who comments on all the stops on the hop today will go into a drawing for this kit!

So leave my friends some love - you probably had better just drop your jaw now, because these ladies are amazing.

The next stop is my sweet friend Kathy's blog - hang out there a while - there's nothing that woman can't do. Then visit the rest for your chance to win!

The Hero Arts Blog
Yana Smakula
Lucy Abrams
Mariana Grigsby
Amy Tsuruta
Kelly Rasmussen
Clare Prezzia
Wanda Guess
Joan Bardee
Sandy Allnock
Lydia Fiedler << You are here :)
Kathy Racoosin
Libby Hickson

Thanks for stopping by - and good luck with the giveaway!

Loveyameanitbye.