I guess many of you know how much I love butterflies so when Tim brought out a new Butterfly and Texture Fade Embossing set, it was the first thing on my ever lengthening list of must-haves! I grew up in Canada where butterflies are abundant in the summer and my favourite was the Monarch butterfly with it's dramatic rusty orange, black and white wings. Now, Tim's new butterfly is a Swallowtail so I had to do a little bit of 'surgery' to make it look more like a Monarch. All I had to do was snip a bit off each of the tails......
I am also trying to create pieces in collage, a technique that I am still learning, this it is not as random as I think it should be but we all have to start somewhere I guess! I started with a black card base and topped it with some Kraft card, after roughing up the edges. On top of this I added a piece of burlap paper (a gift from a lovely friend). I then took a piece of Kraft card and using Tim's new Gothic stencil and some embossing paste (Wendy Vecchi's crackle version) I covered the whole piece of card - it shows up quite well in the photo below. I set this to one side to dry, it took about an hour.
I added a piece of black card left over from a torn notebook die and matted this onto the base - at the right in the above photo. I then die cut a film strip in black card and added a piece of vellum from Tim's new Thrift Shop Ephemera Vellum pack. A piece of lace from my stash was also added. On top of this I matted a piece of card from Tim's Wallflower pack of papers onto Kraft card and again roughed up the edges.
The butterfly itself was a labour of love. I die cut it in black card and used the Texture Fade to emboss it. I took some Spiced Marmalade Distress Paint and used a small paintbrush to carefully paint in all of the debossed sections of the butterfly wings. Around the outside I used Picket Fence DP to fill in the smaller 'dot' sections and left this to dry. As you know Distress Paint dries very quickly which is great because I am not the most patient crafter.
I then added quite a thick coat of Clear Rock Candy Distress Crackle Paint to the whole of the butterfly and put this to one side to dry whilst I made some curly antennae from some jewellery wire.
The sentiment was stamped onto Kraft card using Tim's Simple Sayings stamp set (sorry Hels this is the only stamping on the piece so I hope it qualifies). Thank you for looking and hopefully leaving a comment.
I will be back a couple more times this week, on Thursday with my DT piece for the Artists on the Block and on Friday with our new challenge over at A Vintage Journey.
As well as Sunday Stampers I am entering this piece into the following challenges:
Eclectic Paperie ePlay challenge - Embossing (butterfly and backing card)
and
Mixed Media Monday Challenge #3 - Stencils with embossing paste (dry embossed butterfly and texture paste background with the Gothic stencil)
Simon Says Monday Challenge - Anything Goes
