Butterfly Season

Hello, crafting friends!

It's definitely butterfly season now. Eva and I are seeing some beauties while we're romping about in the countryside. (Actually it's Eva that romps, I try to be more dignified!) Butterflies are featuring on my cards now too and I've been thinking about how to present them in different ways. I've come up with a pair of cards today - come and see:

The first features a wreath decorated with butterflies, and the second shows a split meadow scene where the flowers seem to be turning into butterflies.

CARD ONE
To start the first card, I drew a light pencil line around a glass positioned just off a card panel. I used this as a guide to stamp some flowers from Stampin' Up's Under My Umbrella, which were coloured with alcohol markers. A bow, from MFT's Birthday Cocktail set of dies, was cut twice, offset to make a double bow and placed at the top of the wreath.

The butterflies are from Funky Fossil's In the Meadow stamp set, stamped, coloured and fussy cut. I used them to embellish my wreath and added a blocky sentiment from Uniko's Simply Said Blocks and a sprinkling of iridescent sequins.

CARD TWO
I made a little meadow scene for this card, using Funky Fossil's Scenic Borders stencil for the grass, and some flowers from their In The Meadow stamp set. The scene was cut into panels using a stitched rectangle die by Heffy Doodles, sponged with blue distress ink, and attached to a card base.

The butterflies were stamped, coloured, fussy cut and given a lick of sparkle with a Wink of Stella pen. They were popped up on dimensionals and I finished with a birthday sentiment from Clearly Besotted's Simply Said.

EDITED TO ADD SOME AWARDS
Yay!! This card won a Festive Friday Faves badge!

I'm also delighted to be Honourably Mentioned at the Twofer Challenge!

CHALLENGES
I am joining in with the Twofer Challenge with these two cards. The theme this month is Butterflies, and, as always, we are asked to make two different cards, for different occasions, using the same stamp, die or stencil. With Card One, I'm also linking up with this week's sketch at MFT Sketch Challenge and with Card Two, I'm playing along at Festive Friday, where I've chosen Pink, Green and Flowers from the inspiration list.

AND IN OTHER NEWS
I may try to behave in a dignified fashion on our walks but Eva prefers to immerse herself fully into the role of a wild dog. On today's walk, she dived into a hedge and when I called her back emerged triumphantly looking like this:

She invited me to admire her new ombré 'do' but I suggested a rinse off in the river instead. She agreed to this with enthusiasm, leaping in, careering about energetically chasing sticks before bouncing out and shaking river water all over me. On the way back she found the perfect spot for a good roll on a dusty track and showed me what it would look like if a dog had a romp in a bag of flour. She was about to top this off with a smearing of horse manure when I pointed out rather tersely that I'd had enough and it was time to return home.

Current status is clean, floofy and fragrant (until next time!!)

Hugs,