Butterfly rose

These definitely fall into the “cards that must be made” category. I just checked my spreadsheet (yes, I keep track of the cards I make in a spreadsheet) and I first made a pair of cards for the twins in 2014 and I’ve done it every year since. So what to do for the ninth year?

Aside: I really have to stop thinking of Copic colouring cards as the time-consuming option when it comes to making cards. All the times I’ve decided to do something else “because it will be quicker”, it hasn’t been.

I decided to use this rose frame and butterfly set and if I had just used the dies to cut the frames like I did for my fabric flowers card they wouldn’t have taken long to make. Likewise I could have die cut the butterfly like I did for this note card, but that would have been too simple. No, I wanted to glitz it up a bit and fill them with glitter. If only the set had come with solid versions of the detail dies…

My first attempt was to have the frame on a background completely covered with glitter (relatively simple: cover base card with sheet adhesive, add die-cut frame, add glitter) and that would have been absolutely fine if I hadn’t tried to get interesting with the glitter colour in the centre. That looked awful and if I’d had more of the patterned paper I used I would have started from scratch, but that was the only piece so I had to improvise. (I had found two colourful pieces of paper that went well together, cut a frame and butterfly out of each, and then swapped them so both cards would have something from both pieces of paper.)

That involved running the glittery frame through the die again to see what would happen. And, surprisingly, the outer edges cut through cleanly and almost all of the small areas stayed attached; just a handful of bits needed to be pieced back into place once the frame was glued to the card base. Result. Only one problem: I now had to repeat the process for the other card. The die slipped slightly this time, giving an offset effect. I was about to start again, but my other half insisted that it looked fine and, to be honest, after committing myself to that much glitter, I was easily persuaded.

The butterflies were simpler. I drew around them and hand-cut pieces of backing card. More sheet adhesive, more glitter. And to make them more interesting, I dug out some mini action wobbles and mounted the butterflies on those.

They’re not perfect, but they are quite pretty.

It did take quite a while to clean up all the glitter though…

Supplies:

• dies:
  Apple Blossom – rose butterfly frame
• paper and card:
  patterned paper
  Hunkydory Adorable Scorable matt-tastic – crystal lagoon
  Hunkydory Adorable Scorable matt-tastic – French blue
• miscellaneous:
  Elizabeth Craft Designs – silk microfine glitter – warm diamond
  Elizabeth Craft Designs – silk microfine glitter – deep turquoise
  Sizzix adhesive sheets