Butterfly Hugs

I didn’t have a definite plan for this card when I got started with it. I knew in a very rough sense what I wanted to do – card with a channel with butterflies in – but beyond that I had no idea. It’s fun sometimes just to sit down and see where the creativity takes me. And I’m very pleased with how this one turned out.

I started off with a kraft card base and a white panel of about the same size. Actually the white panel wasn’t quite long enough, but that didn’t matter as I was cutting a chunk away anyway. I cut about 3,5cm off the bottom of the white panel, then cut a wave towards the bottom of it. That left me with the two parts that would border my channel.

I laid the white parts against the kraft card base and drew lines so that I would know where my stamping would be. First I stamped my butterfly, by Knorr Prandell, towards the left hand side of the channel. I then heat embossed it in gold because I thought that would look good against the kraft – and it certainly does!

Next I put a mask over the butterfly and got started with stamping my leafy sprigs.  I used two stamps from Panduro’s A6 Swirls Corner set. I put the card base in my MISTI and used a brown pigment ink for a tone on tone look. I swapped the stamp sets from top to bottom each time, and turned them different ways to try and keep it from looking too repetitive.

With the stamping done I laid the white panels back over to check how it looked. I realised that the border between the white and the kraft was a bit stark. After some thinking I decided to use a gold felt tip pen to add a slight border along the edges of the channel to act as a buffer of sorts.

The last element to add was the sentiment. I took one of the sentiments from CASual Friday’s Calm and Loving set. With the help of my MISTI I curved the sentiment to match the curve of my channel, then stamped and heat embossed it with the same gold I’d used for the butterfly.

Finally I adhered the panels in place with foam tape to add some dimension. The foam tape I have is actually pretty thin so it doesn’t add a whole lot of dimension, but it works anyway!

I’m really happy with how this turned out. It’s not often that I think I’ve managed to create something beautiful, but this might just be that! I think the gold, kraft and brown work fabulously together. I’m very proud of this one!

Love,

Lady Joyful

Challenges included:

Addicted to Stamps and More – Anything Goes

Butterfly Challenge – Butterflies and U is for Underneath and/or Umber (edit – where it was a top pick!)

CAS Colour and Sketches – Sketch/Layout

Simon Says Stamp Monday – Spread Your Wings