Pink Butterfly New Home

Today I have another soft, pink, butterfly card for you. This one is a new home card and uses some ink blending and no-line colouring. Actually this was not the idea I’d originally had, but I decided I didn’t like what I had planned so I changed it up.

Once I had changed to this plan I started by cutting down a panel of white paper to fit the front of my card base leaving a slight margin all the way around. I then used my MISTI to work out positioning for my stamps. I used one of the flowers from Altenew’s Wild Hibiscus and my new Knorr Prandell butterfly stamp. I chose a very pale ink so that the lines would show just enough for me to know where to colour, but be light enough to ‘disappear’ in the finished card. I also stamped the images a second time onto some scrap paper which I used to create masks.

After applying my masks to the butterfly and flower I began to ink blend my background. I started with Milled Lavender Distress Ink. I think the paper I used is perhaps not the best for ink blending because the result was a little bit blotchy. Alternatively, I might just need more practice with ink blending! I also went in with Spun Sugar around the outer edges of the Milled Lavender to help soften the edges. I also added some splatters of water. My splatter technique needs a bit of work too…!

Next I got on with my colouring. I had so much fun with the flicking technique last time I tried it so I decided I’d give it another go. I used a pale pink, darker pink and pink-purple for the flower and carefully layered in the colours, building it up and making sure to leave a nice highlight. I used the same colours for the centre of the flower but also added a lighter peachy colour to help differentiate it. I used three shades of green for the stem and tried to fade it out towards the bottom.

For the butterfly I used the same pinks and purples. I started with the front wing, flicking the colour from the body towards the edge of the wing, getting lighter as I went up. The stamp has a lot of detail, but I realised I really didn’t have time to put all the detail back in, so I stayed with simple colouring instead. For the back wing I added a darker blue purple. I then used grey for the butterfly’s body.

As the colour of the butterfly and flower are fairly similar to the background I went around and added a subtle shadow with some grey in order to help them pop out from the background.

I wanted to add a sentiment but didn’t want to use black as I felt it would be harsh. I found a snippet of grey card and stamped my sentiment onto that. The sentiment comes from Avery Elle’s Home Sweet Home. I stamped with embossing ink and used clear embossing powder, which gives a very soft and subtle result. I added a small flower gem beside the sentiment and cut the ‘front’ end of the strip at an angle.

Using some foam tape on the back of the sentiment panel I attached it to the front of my image panel. I then put a lot more foam tape onto the back of the image panel and attached it to the card base.

I’m reasonably happy with how this turned out. It is a soft, subtle and pretty card. I’m very pleased with the colouring on the flower but the butterfly looks a bit flat in comparison, probably because it doesn’t have the same depth of colour as the highlights on the flower provide. I definitely need more practice with blending for the background. I also think that the background is a little too similar in colour to the colouring.

Love,

Lady Joyful

Challenges included:

Inkspirational – Flutter

Inspired By All The Little Things – Inspiration image (The elements I used were – flower, insect, pink, soft purple background)

Less Is More – New Beginnings

The Paper Players – CAS Flowers