Bricks and butterfly

I picked up a set of the Tim Holtz mixed media dies out of curiosity more than anything else. Rather than giving you a positive shape to work with, these dies are designed to leave you with the negative, empty space on a panel, and I wondered what I could do with that.

My initial idea was to use one of the dies to cut the bricks from the front of a card base and then stick different coloured bricks to the inside of the card so that they would line up neatly when the card was closed. I thought that the combination of black and gold would work nicely.

Hint: GLAD Press’n Seal is amazingly helpful if you want to keep small die cuts organised. (It’s not easy to find UK sellers, but there are several third-party sellers on Amazon.)

Of course, that left me with a set of black bricks and a gold negative piece. I could just have put the two together on another card front, but I decided to play a bit more instead.

I simply glued the black bricks straight onto another black card base. I left the white card core showing on the edges of the die cuts so, from some angles, it looks like they are really catching the light.

I cut a border around the gold brick negative, made a bit of a feeble attempt at distressing the edge (the top layer of that sandgrain card is quite tough), and then glued it to a third card base. Rather than leave the brick spaces empty, I filled them with glossy accents and pico embellisher.

I kept the butterfly the same on all three cards: mirror blue for the detail layer, pearlised blue scraps for the base layer and a tiny bit of gold detail sparkle for the body. I drew a dotted trail for each with Gelly Roll pens.

Hint: If you use Gelly Roll on even slightly shiny card, leave it for way longer than you think it will take to dry. It will dry eventually, but definitely not quickly. If possible, make a test piece you can smudge check.

Supplies:

• dies:
  Clearly Besotted – butterfly duo
  Tim Holtz – mixed media #4
• pens:
  Gelly Roll – metallic blue #536
  Gelly Roll – stardust meteor – blue
• embellishments:
  Imagination Crafts – detail sparkle – gold
  Ranger – glossy accents
  Irresistible pico embellisher – shimmer
• paper and card:
  Hunkydory Adorable Scorable – black
  Papermill Direct – sandgrain – gold
  Papermill Direct – super mirror – blue
  scrap pearlised blue card
• miscellaneous:
  GLAD press n seal