I have a limited collection of dies, so I’m always looking for new ways to use them. Since it’s feeling like spring here in North Carolina, I decided to use one of my most favorite die sets–Waffle Flower’s Pretty Butterflies. This is the card I made…
I started off by cutting the large butterfly twice out of some card stock scraps. I made two stencils because I knew that I was going to ink blend, and I didn’t want any ink transferring when I changed colors. To give the border a little character, I used Avery Elle’s Wonky Stitches dies. I was able to fit 3 butterflies onto my 4×5.25 piece of Bristol paper with very limited masking. For my ink blended butterflies, I used Distress Oxides in Picked Raspberry, Fossilized Amber, Salty Ocean, Seedless Preserves and Spiced Marmalade. The butterflies looked a little too muted for what I had in mind, so I pulled out my Zig Embossing Marker and outlined the butterflies. I stamped the sentiment from Hero Art’s Stamp & Cut Yes set, and black heat embossed everything.
I’m going to be honest here…I wasn’t very careful when I heat embossed. Black flecks were small but noticeable, so I had to somehow camouflage them. I just splattered some watered down black paint and now they look intentional 🙂
To finish it off, I matted the card front with black card stock and adhered it to a top folding card base using foam tape.
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I have to admit, I struggled with this sketch initially. It took a couple of “trial and error” cards to figure out what I really wanted to do. I think where I kept getting stuck was the uphill slant on the design.
I started with an A2 white card stock base. I roughly masked off the bottom portion and stamped the Hero Arts Tiny Star background stamp with Versamark ink. I heat embossed with Recollections gold embossing powder. Then I did some ink blending for the sky using Chipped Sapphire and Blueprint Sketch Distress Inks. I was careful to be light handed near the bottom portion to give the idea of a slight glow from the lighted windows. I then die cut the houses using the Tim Holtz Townscape On the Edge die. I cut the houses apart and backed 5 of them with light yellow card stock. I glued them on the diagonal to represent a hill and then covered them with a basket weave embossed (We R Memory Keepers embossing folder) kraft piece. In order to match the greeting to the sky, I ink blended a piece of white card stock. After making sure it was completely dry, I stamped the words from the Waffle Flower Merry stamp set in Versamark and heat embossed with the gold embossing powder. As a final touch, I used my clear Wink of Stella marker on each of the windows.
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