June My Monthly Hero Countdown: Idea #1 + Giveaway!

Hello and welcome! Today we begin the countdown to the launch of our June My Monthly Hero kit! Over the next three days we will be sharing several ideas for using this month’s kit, leading up to the release on Monday, June 6 at 1pm Eastern/10am Pacific. Be sure to visit every post and leave your comments – one lucky reader will win a kit before you can buy it! Here's our first idea, from Yana!

My hubby and I really enjoy traveling so when I saw the travel-themed kit from Hero Arts I got very excited! The sentiments and little images in the stamp set are perfect for travel tags, cards and journals and I'm really looking forward to bringing the journal from the kit along with the stamp set and maybe a few ink cubes with me on our next vacation to fill out during our travels.

As I started playing with my kit, I die cut a tag out of leather paper and had a rectangle left over piece from the tag window (I'll share the tag on Monday, during our traditional Kit Blog Hop).

I really wanted to test and see if I would be able to emboss it with some of the mini dies from my kit so I went with that idea (you can emboss with dies on paper, but the paper needs to be heavy weight to be able to take all of the pressure, so I wasn't sure if this leather paper would work).

Before embossing I stamped my design, I was using a mini MISTI stamping tool and double stamped every image just to be sure. I messed up my stamping slightly and the Be Right Back sentiment got inked up with blue over red in the top right corner, but I think that worked out okay - travel tags always end up looking rather messy and worn, so this imperfect stamping was spot on.

Next I embossed this leather tag with a few mini dies from my kit - I used embossing sandwich in my die cutting machine. The geo tag die was embossed at the top and I poked a hole through it and added some airmail twine for a cool tag-like look.

The background on this card was also hand stamped. I used a little airplane icon and an arrow line and just curved it on my clear block to form various airplane routes on the background and create a unique pattern.

Be sure to stop by later today for another look at this must have travel kit!