Hello stampers! We have a lot of good stuff in store for you today as we continue our week of monochromatic color schemes. We’ll get to the Web Artists’ projects in just a moment but first, our web guru Lisa is here to share some information on a feature new to the Hero Club blog — gravatars! Take it away, Lisa…

What’s a gravatar you ask?  Well, it stands for globally recognized avatar — and that’s just a fancy way of saying the little picture that shows up next to your comments — like so:

It’s a great way to add a personal touch to your comments. And it’s so fun to get to “meet” the face behind the words and get to know people better.  Nice to see you there, Karen and Kari!

How do you get your own gravatar?  It’s easy!  Go to gravatar.com, create an account and upload an image for your gravatar. If you don’t want to use an image of yourself, that’s fine too — it can be a pet, a flower, a stamp — the sky’s the limit!  Then, post a comment with one of the email addresses you registered with gravatar.com and your image will appear next to your comment.  Your gravatar will also will work on other sites that use gravatars — and there are many!  Woo hoo!

Now let’s talk about today’s theme — monochromatic cards that incorporate Art Flowers! Art Flowers come in several great variety packs, from Spring to Summer to Meadow to Vintage Collage and more!  Two Art Flower assortments are available in our new online store HERE. They can be inked, stamped, altered, and folded in any number of ways. Such a fun element to add to your cards and layouts!

Onto today’s projects from the Web Artists!  Laura Griffin kicks things off with a lovely monochromatic birthday card in tones of yellow — so soft and pretty! Here’s Laura with more: “I love designing with monochromatic colors. It gives you permission to splurge on your fav shades and you can make creations with just a few supplies. Hero Arts note cards, chalk ink queues, flowers, & gems are perfect for this technique because they provide you with several shades to choose from right off the bat! I decided to work with yellow for this birthday card because it’s such a cheerful color.”

Supplies:

• Clear Design: Designer Butterflies
• Clear Design: Hugs and Hearts
• Sunny Birthday
• Sunshine Notecards
• Pumpkin Patch Chalk Ink Queue
• Memories ArtPrint Brown Ink
• Meadow Art Flowers
• Medium Accent Pearls
• Other:  approximately 3 feet of white satin ribbon, small yellow button, white scallop paper frill border (Doodlebug Design Inc), 1/8″ hole punch

Tips from Laura:

• Use accent pearls to make a simple scallop border pop.
• Add shading to your butterfly by starting with a lighter ink on the inside, and adding a darker ink to the tips of the wings.
• Be sure to throw in some neutrals (like the white here) for added contrast.

Watch as Laura demonstrates how she created the unique ribbon treatment and more on today’s video…

This next creation from the talented Kandis Smith is a wonderful example of a monochromatic card. The pink and red houndstooth pattern adds interest, and the Art Flower bird’s wing is such a cute and clever addition! Kandis shares, “Pink has so many different tones to it, it makes for an easy monochromatic card! Pink isn’t just for baby girls– any friend would love to get something bubblegum pink!!”

Supplies:

• Clear Design: Woodland Creatures
• Houndstooth
• Clear Design: Big Circles
• Pink Accent Pearls
• Spring Art Flowers
• Card Buttons Spring
• Rose Petals Chalk Ink Queue
• Soft Blossom Shadow Ink
• Blush Notecards
• Other: circle cutter, decorative scissors, machine stitching, linen string

A tip from Kandis: Create a fun “wing” for a little bird by folding a flower in half and adding a cute button to the front! Looks so feathery and soft!

Last but not last, Sheri Reguly came up with a fabulous design for a monochromatic scrapbook page that’s loaded with amazing details. Check out all of the stamped tiles she created — wow!  Sheri says, “A monochromatic color palette allows you to mix numerous patterns and stamped images while still achieving a cohesive and classic design. I used my 1 1/2″ square punch, and stamped a different image onto each square. For some I used a white background, for others I used an orange. I arranged them into a grid pattern, framing my focal photo, and adding additional accent photos in place of some stamped images. A touch of black & white text patterned paper adds just the right amount of contrast, while helping to make the orange art flowers pop.”

Supplies:

• Clear Design: Thinking Of You Messages
• Clear Design: Valentine Flourishes
• Screen Shadow
• Thank You Card
• Clear Design: Birds and Butterflies
• Old French Writing
• Designer Butterflies
• Summer Mixed Notecards
• White Notecards
• Summer Art Flowers
• Summer Card Buttons
• Assorted Clear Circles
• VersaMark
• White Embossing Powder
• StazOn Jet Black
• Sand Dune Chalk Ink Queue
• Other: cardstock (Bazzill), patterned paper (Making Memories, October Afternoon), ribbon (Making Memories), thread, staples, machine stitching

Tips from Sheri:

• Create a unique look by layering different stamped images. Examples of this are the Screen Shadow image combined with the butterfly and heart flourish, as well as the Old French Writing image topped with the heart flourish.
• Lightly inking the edges of each square helps to unify them, in addition to adding definition.

Laura, Kandis and Sheri…thanks so much for the great inspiration today!

See you tomorrow for the big announcement of last week’s Website Challenge winners. Remember, we’re giving away double the prizes so it will be an extra special winner’s post!

Filed under: monochromatic

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 at 4:34 am and is filed under Watch It Wednesdays. 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.