18th Birthday Butterfly

A colourful card today which is nice because it’s been grey and stormy with torrential rain here today! The layout for this card came from Retrosketches. Crafty Catz (Edit – where this card was chosen as one of the top three!) asked for three patterned papers, two embellishments (I’m counting the three flowers as one, and the two gems on the butterfly as the other), and one butterfly. The butterfly theme also came, of course, from the Butterfly Spot Challenge, which also asked for the incorporation of yellow and years – I chose 18 for mine. I’m also including Craftyhazelnut’s Patterned Paper challenge, and the anything goes challenges from A Bit More Time To Craft and Dragonfly Dreams.

I began by going through my paper stash to find all the papers I had that included yellow. I then tried to decide which ones I wanted to use. I picked out the main panel first – it has butterflies and yellow without being overpowering, so seemed a good starting point. I picked out my other papers based on that, in order to try and make them coordinate as well as possible.

I cut the patterned paper to size, then created the mats for it. I went for yellow for the larger mat and pink for the smaller, as the patterned paper also had a lot of pink tones in it.

Next I began making the flag/banner part of the layout. Initially I did one with patterned paper (the yellow flowers) and then two with the same plain papers as the matting, but then I remembered I still needed one more patterned paper so I swapped out the pink flag for a butterfly patterned paper instead. In fact it is the opposite side of the same paper I used for the main panel.

I built my sentiment from the letters in Lawn Fawn’s Jessies ABCs and stamped it onto the plain flag with Memento Tuxedo Black ink. I then trimmed all the flags down to size and cut the “tails” into them (what’s the actual word for those bits?!) I played with my positioning for the flags on the patterned paper and realised they needed some more definition. I sponged ink around each of the flags – Spiced Marmalade for the yellow ones and Seedless Preserves for the other – to give them that definition and help them stand out from the background a bit better.

The butterfly is punched from the same yellow paper as the sentiment flag and the larger mat. I sponged it with Spiced Marmalade to differentiate it a bit more. I went on to add the embellishments, using Tombow Multi Mono Liquid glue and positioning them carefully. At that point all my components were ready.

Assembly was very straight forward. I used my tape runner to attach my patterned panel to the pink mat, that to the yellow mat, then the whole lot to the white card base which I had cut, scored and folded previously. I put the flags on dry so I could work out the arrangement, then carefully picked them up and adhered them into one bundle with the tape runner to make sure they stayed correctly positioned. I then added more tape runner to the back of the bundle and stuck it into place on the card, lining it up with the edge of the patterned paper panel. Last but not least I applied the butterfly using a spot of Tombow Multi Mono Liquid glue.

I quite like how this card turned out. I feel like I did a good job of matching up the colours, which is something I tend to struggle with! I am pleased with how I managed to bring in the yellow as a main colour without overpowering the card with it.

Love,

Lady Joyful