Welcome to our BIG week here at Hero Arts! We are so excited - we have SO much to share with you each day.  Go ahead and take a moment to add to your calendar to “check Hero Arts” every day this week.  It will be worth it.  There will be DOUBLE prizes, games, ideas, giveaways and more! And Wednesday is the BIG DAY - the launch of many fun new things here at Hero Arts.

This week we are celebrating our new website, but stick around because next week we will start showing some peeks of our new stamps coming out at CHA in a couple weeks. So much excitement!

Let’s get started!  Grab a cup of coffee and get comfy…

Oh, my… wait a second!  What is that we see on the screen?!  Is that a peek at the NEW and improved heroarts.com? Look at that WIDE screen video.  Woohoo! We can’t wait to show you more on the 15th.

OK… back to our regularly scheduled program. :0)  Now, we can’t have a blog week without a challenge to get us all creating!  Naturally, this week we are going to focus on ideas found on our main website - heroarts.com. All the projects we share here will be inspired by something we find there - whether it be our cards, scrapbook pages, technique articles or more.  We will even share a peek and link at the inspiration piece.

First, did you know that we add cards to our Cardmaking Gallery at least once a week?  There are a lot of cards there to inspire you, such as this one from Jennifer McGuire. (Click to see it bigger.)

Jennifer’s card inspired Shari Carroll to create her own rendition.  She switched it up a bit using her comfort colors and says, “When I use colors that I love, it helps make my cardmaking process a little quicker than normal.”

Card by Shari Carroll.
Supplies:

• Leaf Branch Border
• Dots and Flowers Background
• Clear Design Thank You Sayings
• Old Paper Distress Ink
• VersaMark Ink
• White Embossing Powder
• Light Blue Accent Pearls
• Art Flowers Meadow
• Neutral Notecards
• Other: Blue cardstock and ribbon

Our Hero Arts catalogs are full of inspiring ideas, such as this great card by Lisa Spangler.  (Click to see it bigger.)

Jennifer McGuire was inspired by this card.  She decided to do some of what she calls “movie-time coloring” - where she stamps a bunch of images and sits in front of a movie with the family and colors away.  We love how she used a red Hero Arts notecard inside out!

Card by Jennifer McGuire.
Supplies:

• Four Apples Set
  
• Everyday Sayings
  
• Black Memories Ink
• Other: Cuttlebug embossing folder and Copic markers

One of our favorite parts of heroarts.com is our Stamp Craft area where we share unique craft projects every month, such as this handmade t-shirt Stamp Craft project by Barb Hache.  (Click to see bigger.)

This project inspired Laura Griffin to create these most adorable onesies! Wouldn’t these make a wonderful gift?

Onesies by Laura Griffin.
Supplies:

• Clear Design: Adorable Baby Girl
• Clear Design: Precious Baby Boy
• Other: Package of 5 white short-sleeve onesies (0-3 months), water based markers in a variety of colors, pencils & chalk inks (for caterpillar and tree coloring), t-shirt transfer paper (I used Avery Ink Jet T-shirt transfers #3271 available at your local office supply store), scanner (optional)

Here’s Laura with some tips: “I used the same technique with T-shirt transfer paper (described HERE) only I substituted water-based markers for the chalk inks.  For the words, I stamped several of them onto white paper in black ink, scanned them into my computer, then printed them off in reverse onto the t-shirt transfer paper.  (If you stamp directly, your words will be backwards). For the “Roar!” and “Lil’ Sailor” text, I just used a free font on my computer and printed them in black.”

Did you know there is an new Technique Article on heroarts.com every month?  Click here to see our current one by Shari Carroll…

Since we are having such a fun week here, we decided to ask our Hero Hostesses to play along!  Today we have a beautiful card from Donna Mikasa, inspired by this same article by Shari.

Card by Donna Mikasa.
Supplies:

• Scallop Flourish
  
• Raindrop Background
• Distress Inks in Shabby Shutters, Peeled Paint and Worn Lipstick
• Versamark Ink
  
• Diamond Stickles
  
• Clear Embossing Powder
• Spring Art Flowers
  
• Other: Buttons (Basic Grey), grosgrain ribbon, pop dots

Now for our challenge for YOU - and we have DOUBLE THE PRIZES this week! This week’s challenge is to create something that is inspired by anything on heroarts.com (our main website, not this blog). It could be a card, scrapbook page, technique article, or more from heroarts.com. Just post your creation - along with the link to the inspiration - in our Flickr group with the tag “website”.  Be sure to use at least one Hero Arts stamp.  The deadline for the challenge is Sunday, July 19 at 11:59 pm PST. From the entries we will pick twice as many winners as normal… and the prizes are twice as big:

• TWO Fresh Face Winners (someone who has not yet won a contest): $100 of new Hero Arts stamps + a 2009 catalog each
• TWO Scrapbook Page Winners: $100 of new Hero Arts stamps + a 2009 catalog each
  
• TWO 1st Place: $100 of new Hero Arts stamps + a 2009 catalog each
• TWO 2nd Place: $50 of new Hero Arts stamps + a 2009 catalog each
• TWO 3rd Place: $30 of new Hero Arts stamps + a 2009 catalog each

And we can’t start this big week without a giveaway.  Wait - how about TWO!?  Yep.  Let’s do two giveaways…

1. Leave a comment here telling us something you like about our main website, heroarts.com.  Do so by Friday at 11:59 pm PST and we will pick a lucky winner.
2. Post about our big week on your blog.  Then leave a comment here linking us to your blog.  Do so by tonight at 11:59 pm PST and we will pick another lucky winner!

Both winners will get these great goodies…

Thanks for stopping by…see you tomorrow!

PS:  Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook this week for even more fun!  See the post below for more information.

Filed under: website

This entry was posted on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 3:55 am and is filed under Motivation Mondays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.