Welcome to the very first post on the Handmade by Inez blog. Thanks for being here! I'm so happy to hopefully be able to connect to the card making community in a whole new way, and I hope to be able to share lots of creativity through this new outlet!

As a happy coincidence, I happened to get my "My Monthly Hero" kit from Hero Arts on the day I decided to make my first blog post, so for that reason, I'm presenting the first of two cards today that I made using that kit which, by the way, is so fun and playful. It makes me miss Texas having recently moved to the Pacific Northwest! 

I was drawn to the four amazing cacti images in this stamp set. They were so cute and expressive; I wanted to make them the centerpiece stars of a relatively clean and simple card.

I started by stamping them side by side on Recollections 110lb white card stock. I wanted them to be slightly soft, so where I normally would have stamped them in black, I instead stamped them using my Misti stamping tool with a mini Lawn Fawn ink cube in Narwhal. The slightly lighter ink color allowed for just a tad softer end result, especially after coloring over them with Copic markers. 

I colored the cacti using Copic numbers YG11, YG13, and YG17, using only two markers on some cacti and three on others to vary the colors. The cute little flowers were begging to be colored a cheery pink, so I used Copic numbers RV21, RV23, RV25 to bring them to life. Finally, I added shadows with my Shuttle Art WG1 to ground them, and a White Gelly Roll Classic 08 gel pen to accent their shine in places. 

I struggled deciding how to apply the sentiment. I considered stamping or embossing it directly on the card, but I was worried that would be a little too clean and simple, so I went with the next most simple sentiment application I could think of - a little black die cut. I cut a banner from scrap black card stock using one of the banner dies from the Hero Arts My Monthly Hero March 2018 kit. Then, I embossed the "Looking Sharp" sentiment onto the banner using Ranger White Super Fine Detail Embossing Powder. Finally, I adhered the banner above the cacti using my Scotch Advanced Tape Glider. 

And that's it for this charming, clean, and simple cacti card. Thanks so much for sticking around through the first post on the Handmade by Inez blog! The next post also uses the My Monthly Hero kit for this month, and it's as festive as this card was simple. I'm looking forward to sharing with you all then!