Today I’m joining the Pinkfresh Studio July Challenge, and this month’s theme is butterflies. If you’ve been hanging around here or following me on Instagram for the last couple of weeks, you’ll already know that I’ve been very into the butterfly card trend! Today’s design is one that I came up with after creating the Sweet Blooms and Stripes foiled card from earlier this week. I had a bunch of extra strips of cardstock (including the foiled Sweet Blooms design) leftover, and I didn’t have the heart to let it all go to waste.
Enter the idea for this month’s challenge card: Sweet Blooms and Butterflies? Sounded like a good idea to me!
Since I’d already foiled the Sweet Blooms plate on white cardstock and cut it into strips for my previous card, the only additional foiling I needed to do was for the Small Butterflies. Like the Sweet Blooms stripes, I used Spellbinders Glimmer hot foil in Champagne, foiling once on white cardstock and again on vellum. For the latter, I added an extra cardstock shim in my sandwich to be sure that the impressions of the butterflies would come out looking crisp. (Whether you need a shim or not depends on your die cutting machine. Personally, I find it’s helpful to use one with vellum, but don’t find it necessary when foiling on cardstock.)
I used the coordinating Small Butterflies die (all one piece – wahoo!) to cut all the butterflies out, matched up the vellum ones with the corresponding cardstock ones, then stuck them together with tiny glue dots. While my die cutting machine was out, I used Lea’s Ornate Lower Case and Heather’s Lower Case alpha dies to cut out a simple ‘hi’ for my sentiment.
With all the elements ready, it was time for assembly. The background panel was created by simply arranging my stripes of cardstock horizontally on a piece of basic printer paper trimmed just under 3.5″ wide x 4.75″ tall. Then for the piece on top, I used a piece of plain white cardstock cut to exactly 3.5″ wide x 4.75″ tall, traced the partial outline of a large nested circle die at the top, and cut along it with scissors to get a nice smooth curve. I backed the striped panel and the white panel with foam tape, then mounted them one on top of the other on my white A2 card base. Finally, I adhered the letters for the sentiment, followed by the butterflies along the curve at the top. The card was complete, and with the exception of the butterflies, all of it was done using scraps. Gotta love when that happens, right?
Want to join in on the Pinkfresh Studio July Challenge? You’ll find all the details here, including the deadline and prizes (yes, there’s prizes!) Wishing you good luck in advance, and thank you so much for stopping by!