digital blog hop with hero arts & a2z scrapbooking

Hey there! Today I'm honored to be participating in the Hero Arts & A2Z Scrapbooking Digital Blog Hop along with a handful of very talented designers. A2Z now offers a selection of Hero Arts digital goodies, and in the coming weeks, they will be adding even more to their collection. What better way to celebrate the new collaboration than with a blog hop with a whole host of inspiration and fun? And oh yes...a giveaway too!

Hero Arts has just released this sweet Bottle Brush digi kit and I couldn't resist using it for today's card. Check out the kit preview -- so many fun options with this one!

And here's the personalized Christmas card I came up with. The bottle brush trees bring a touch of nostalgia to an otherwise modern design. This one would be ideal for assembly line cardmaking and is also mail-friendly.

The assembly line steps:

1. Print the main panel onto textured paper (I used watercolor paper.)
2. Trim panel to 4 x 5.25" and adhere to a colored 4.25 x 5.5" card base.
3. Embellish with gold stars, gold marker dots, and baker's twine.
4. Optional: Add a photo inside. 

Simple as that!

Here's a look at how I created the trees. (I use GIMP, a free image editing program.) After opening the bottle brush tree stamp, I recolored it green using the "Colorize" feature. Then I dropped the solid circle image from the kit onto the tree, colored it white, and duplicated it several times in various sizes like so...

Once the green tree was complete, I saved it and added it to a new blank canvas three times. I recolored two of the trees -- one red, one pool. You can see in the screenshot below how I used guides to make sure everything was lined up. Once the trees were in place, I dropped in the message (recolored gray) and added "from the Hartley family" to personalize the card. The font I used for that part was F25 Executive.

At this point I merged the layers, saved the image, and printed it onto white watercolor paper. If you were mass producing the cards, you could fit four of these onto a standard piece of 8.5 x 11" cardstock.

Now about that giveaway! To add extra fun to the hop, A2Z Scrapbooking will be giving away a $50 gift certificate to one lucky commenter. Prize winners will be randomly selected from ALL comments received on the participating designers’ blogs. The more comments you leave along the hop, the better your odds of winning, so be sure to comment on every blog, starting with this one! You have until Sunday, August 31st at 11:59pm EST to leave your comments and the winner will be announced on September 3rd on the A2Z Scrapbooking blog.

To continue the hop please click over to the blog of the fabulous Kelly Latevola. If you encounter a broken link while hopping, you can always head back to the beginning for links to everyone who's participating.

Thanks so much for hopping by! Hope you have a fantastic day!