Welcome back to our big week here at Hero Arts! Today, we get to share some information about our new shopping area that will debut tomorrow, show some more card ideas, announce our new Hero Hostesses, and give away a shopping spree!  Here we go…

Tomorrow we will be unveiling our brand new store, and we are so excited about the changes! The Hero Arts shopping experience is about to get a whole lot sweeter. The store has a new look and will be stocked with:

• All of the stamps from our 2009 supplements (What’s Cooking, Ink ‘n’ Stamp, Spring 2009)
• Many of the favorites from the main 2009 catalog
• Plus a wonderful variety of embellishments, inks, and papers

And! A brand new feature we are thrilled to introduce — you will now be able to order online and pick up your purchase at participating stores if you choose to do so!  Hero Arts feels strongly that supporting local stores is very important.

So, stop back by tomorrow for some shopping fun!

Now it’s time to share some more cards inspired by projects over on heroarts.com.  We will first show a peek of the inspiration, and then the new cards they inspired.

Tami Hartley is a favorite Hero Arts artist.  She is amazing at creative use of stamps, such as with this card.  (Click to see the full card.)

Check out this card created by Kandis Smith based on Tami’s design.  We are loving these colors!

Card by Kandis Smith.
Supplies:

• Clear Design: Friends
• Clear Design: Printed Flowers
• Wallpaper Background
• Soft Blossom Shadow Ink
  
• Memories Dye Ink Ruby
• Crimson Notecards
  
• Pink Notecards
  
• Pool Notecards
  
• Card Buttons Spring
• Art Flowers Summer
• Small and Medium Accent Pearls
• Other: embossing (Cuttlebug), linen string

Hero Arts loves scrapbookers, too!  Our Scrapbooking Gallery is updated every week and is filled with inspiring ways to combine stamping and scrapbooking, such as this page by Jennifer McGuire. (Click for a better peek.)

This scrapbook page inspired Kelly Rasmussen to create a clipboard of a similar design.  What a great gift this would be for someone!

Clipboard by Kelly Rasmussen.
Supplies:

• Bold Flourish
• Raindrop Background
• Dots and Flowers
• Clear Design:  Mix & Match Elements
• Clear Design:  All Occasion Messages
• Shabby Shutters and Broken China Tim Holtz Distress Inks
• Soft Pool Ink Pad, Black and  Dahlia Memories Ink Pad
  
• Card Buttons Summer
• Other Materials:  unfinished wood clipboard, border punches (Fiskars and EK Success), patterned paper (Making Memories and Bo Bunny), chipboard flower (Making Memories), Mod Podge, white and pink acrylic paints, sewing, pink ribbon, white string

Kelly said: “After I was finished gluing down all the papers to the clipboard, I put a thin coat of Mod Podge over the top to protect it.  It adds a nice matte finish and also protects the papers.”

Are you all excited about Hero Arts’ new website?  You will get to see it tomorrow!  I can promise you one thing - it will be cheerful and fun.  (You can see more of it soon!)

Well, Hero Hostess Jenn Biederman created this card for us that was inspired by the “bright, cheery colors and cute characters on heroarts.com.”  So clever!

Card by Jenn Biederman.
Supplies:

• Small Variety Alphabet
• Birds and Branches
  
• Dots and Flowers
  
• Clouds
• Tim Holtz Distress Inks Walnut Stain & Peeled Paint
• StazOn Jet Black
  
• Chocolates and Blueberries Chalk Queue (Prussian Blue)
• Pool Notecards
  
• Other: Cosmo Cricket “Girl Friday” letter chipboard, Happy Day diecut hand-cut from Cosmo Cricket “Girl Friday” elements, string
  

We know that everyone loves Shari Carroll’s Technique articles.  One of the favorite articles is one on creating fun size and shaped cards, along with envelopes for smaller greetings.  (Click to see the article.)

Shari’s article inspired Hero Hostess Karen Piskor to create this fabulous card and envelope.  She used Shari’s tip of adding sewing to the envelope so the smaller card would fit snug.

Card by Karen Piskor.
Supplies:

• Raindrop Background
• Ink ‘n’ Stamp Design Elements
• Sunshine Notecards
  
• Card Buttons Summer
• Tim Holtz Distress Ink Tea Dye, Peeled Paint and Spiced Marmalade
  
• Black Memories Dye Ink
• Other: Cuttlebug embossing folders, Nestabilities die cuts, EK Success punches, embroidery floss, distress tool and black marker (Karen used the marker to circle the dots on the background - so fun!)

As we mentioned earlier, we will be welcoming a new group of incoming Hero Hostesses today! But before we do that, we would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to the “Super Seven” — our first ever group of Hero Hostesses! These seven were truly the “hosti with the mosti”! Always encouraging, always helpful, always inspiring — they  filled their roles beyond all expectations.  What a great three months. We are so very lucky to have them in the Hero Arts family. A million thanks to:

• Jenn Biederman
• Kelly Booth
• Lisa Carroll
• Judy Jung
• Donna Mikasa
• Deborah Nolan
• Karen Piskor

Now, we are very happy to introduce our next group of Hero Hostesses! If you have spent some time in the Hero Arts Flickr Group, you’ll surely recognize their names for their valuable contributions to the community. Please join us in welcoming our eight new Hero Hosteses…

• Lucy Abrams (Lucy, England)
• Cathy Andronicou (newkidfish)
• Lin Brandyberry (quilterlin)
• Tiffany Ervin (Paper Girl)
• Tracey Kuzniak (TRace44)
• Virginia Lu (Virginia L.)
• Sarah Moerman (sarahjane4kids)
• Kathy Racoosin (crzy4stamps-kathy)

We are thrilled that they have accepted our invitations, and we look forward to the next three months as they wear their aprons and help the community be the best it can be! The Hostesses will receive lots of fun Hero products to play with and we encourage them to enter the weekly challenges to provide inspiration; however, they cannot be selected as winners.  After their hostess term is up, they can once again enter contests.

Now how about a great prize?  Just leave a comment on this post by Friday at 11:59 pm PST congratulating our retiring and new Hero Hostesses and we will pick a lucky winner of a $100 shopping spree for our new store debuting tomorrow! You are even welcome to check out their Flickr galleries (click on their flickr usernames above) and tell us your favorites cards. Good luck!

See you tomorrow for some really BIG fun…

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 at 4:07 am and is filed under Take Two Tuesdays. 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.