January 2023 My Monthly Hero Kit Blog Hop!

Hi and welcome to my blog, and my first post for 2023! Today’s post is part of a blog hop celebrating the first Hero Arts My Monthly Hero kit of the year, and there is a giveaway!

The next stop on the hop is my talented friend Jen Kray!

This kit is super cute and perfect for those Valentine’s Day projects! Beautiful card stock, sweet stamps and coordinating diecuts, as well as a stencil and a bit of sparkle.

This is what Hero Arts are saying about the kit: With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, the January My Monthly Hero kit celebrates the “perfect match”. The centerpiece of this kit is dies to create a faux matchbox, which lies flat on your card or project and can be decorated and filled with the numerous stamps and dies included in the kit. But don’t stop there, let your imagination go wild with all of the possibilities this kit contains! Use the images on their own, build repeating patterns, or add them to planner pages, journals, and more! There is a beautiful stencil included, perfect for backgrounds or mixed media projects. The kit is rounded out with a pack of fun heart-themed sequins and five sheets of gorgeous cardstock.

If you haven’t subscribed to the My Monthly Hero kit, you can sign up HERE. This is a pre-order, and Hero Arts will start shipping the kits on Friday the 13th of January. If you are not subscribed, and miss out on a kit, that’s it, you can not get it again. They are only available in a limited quantity and once they are gone, they are gone. It’s also a great deal as the kit is valued at $77, but it only costs $34.99!

There are also a bunch of fun add-ons you can get, as usual! There are a bunch of fun diecuts, including one that makes an actual match box. There is also a gorgeous heart cover plate, a hot foil plate, a striped stencil and really lovely sentiment stamps, on their own or with coordinating diecuts!! If you are a subscriber, you can add any, or all of these, to your kit order, before it ships, without having to pay extra shipping.

If you can’t pick and chose which ones to get, you can snag them all RIGHT HERE.

As a self-confessed hot foil addict, I love the option of adding foiling to my projects. It’s such a touch of luxury, and glam, and I will never, ever tire of it. The fun thing with hot foil plates is that you can actually use them as embossing plates AND you can dab ink on them and “stamp” as well. Yep, it’s not just for foiling.

However, for my project today I have used just the main kit, so let’s get into it!

First off I used my trimmer to cut out strips of the card stock included, they are about 1cm wide. I did cut two of each, because I wasn’t sure how many I needed, but I did just use one of each in the end.

To add some interest to the white card base, I have ink blended just a touch of left over pink ink (the colour is Taffy) over the stencil. By not adding more ink, the results are super soft and delicate, but you do have to blend for quite a while. I will say it’s worth it for this sort of result.

My second card is also done with just stamps and dies from the main kit, I did use some Distress Spray in Black Soot and some gold water colours to add some interest to the white background.

I cut out the flat matchbox out of white card stock and heat embossed ‘Valentine’ on it in white embossing powder for a subtle look. The hearts are cut out of satin gold card stock and I also used a few of the little red hearts from the embellishments, that come in the kit.

The little specks of red, matched with the gold, works really well I think!

Next up, I had to use that lovely Hearts Hot Foil plate. But not in red, that felt too on the nose, so I went with Matte Gold instead. It looks gorgeous!

This card is finished off by making a card base of out the Peony card stock that comes in the kit, stamping up a sentiment from the You’re Mine stamp and diecut set, and add some 3D heart balloons made with some of the diecuts from the main kit.

My last, and final card, is way outside of my comfort zone. It has so much white space I’m spacing out…!

I started out by cutting out a panel using the Heart Flourish Cover Plate, out of white card stock, and layering this up onto a white card base.

On this I simply added ‘Sending hugs kisses’ from the You’re Mine stamp and diecut set. Because there is no ‘and’ in the stamp set I used the double heart diecut instead of it, this and the lips are cut out of red card stock. To make these stand out a little I added a lot of Crystal Clear Lacquer Pen and set aside to dry.

That’s it from me for today, but don’t forget to check out the rest of the hop! To enter the giveaway, you only have to leave comments on the stops, and you have until January 15th to do so. The winner of the $50 Hero Arts gift card will be announced on the blog the following week, so make sure to check back to see if you have won!

I have used some compensated affiliate links in this post, to Hero Arts, and if you shop with these links I will get a small commission from them directly. At absolutely zero extra cost to you!

Income from these affiliate links are what pays for the boring stuff like blog hosting, internet security, equipment, and other tools for the creative side. I really, really appreciate it whenever someone uses my links, no matter how small the order, every single one helps, so thank you from the bottom of my heart!

Lots of love and happy crafting from Erica