Butterfly bouquet

Hello, crafting friends!

I'm so happy  to have been invited to guest design today with the talented ladies at the Day Of The Month Card Club challenge where they're celebrating their second birthday with prizes!  This month, the theme is Learn About Butterflies Day and since spring seems to arrived early in my little corner of the world, it's easy for me to imagine a garden glowing with flowers and alive with fluttering butterflies!

To create a background for my butterflies, I stamped one of the bouquets from Stampin' Up's Wrapped Bouquet directly onto a card base then, turning the card round 180 degrees, stamped it again beneath the first. The flowers were coloured with coloured pencils.

To cover the join, I chose a banner style sentiment from an older SU set called Banners for you. It was stamped, shaded with yellow pencils and fussy cut. And then it was time to introduce the stars of the show, the butterflies!

My pair of pretty butterflies came from an even older SU set Painted Glass. They were stamped, coloured with alcohol markers and fussy cut. I attached them to the background with dimensional pads.

And now it's your turn! Are you already thinking about which butterflies you can use? Do pop over to the Day of the Month Card Club blog and enjoy the amazing samples the team have made for you, and you can link your card up there too when you're ready.

CHALLENGES

I'm linking this card up at Ellibelle's Crafty Wednesday challenge where she'd like to see Spring Colours; Also Simon Says Stamp where Beautiful Blossoms are the theme; and also at Marsha's Occasions challenge at Watercooler Wednesday

AND IN OTHER NEWS

Because the title of the Day of The Month Card Club Challenge was Learn about Butterflies Day, I thought I'd look them up and learn something new. I found out some extraordinary things: their wings are actually transparent for example - they're made up of tiny scales and the amazing colours we see are just reflections we see through the scales. They don't live for very long - between two to four weeks on average. They taste with their feet! How mad is that?! They can't fly when they're cold... Oh butterflies, I am so with you on that one! When is the real spring coming?

Sending hugs,

The doves from above

Hello, crafting friends!

Like everyone else that is reading this I love playing with stamps, but my favourite thing is to find a surprising way to use them!

The bird in the recently-released Christmas Characters stamp set from Funky Fossil usually carries an envelope but it occurred to me that if there were two of them, they could carry a festive banner! 

So, I stamped one bird, then used the mirror technique to stamp another, shaded them with an alcohol marker and fussy cut them, snipping off the envelopes as I didn't need those. You can see what the stamp usually looks like from the image on the right in the photo above.

The banner is from WPlus9's Be Merry and I used an appropriate sentiment from Uniko's Pure Florals Poinsettia (retired), curving it slightly to fit. To give a suggestion of church, I stamped a stained glass window image from Stampin' Up's retired Painted Glass (retired) and added a rough plaster wall courtesy of their In Good Taste designer paper.

CHALLENGES

I shall link my doves from above up with this month's bird-themed challenge at CAS Christmas; I'm also joining in with Merry Little Christmas where as always, Anything Goes.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

I have decided The Craft Square Metre needs an overhaul! My crafting space is in the living room, so I have to be very tidy. I had cunningly interspersed the books on the bookshelves with tasteful boxes and baskets concealing a variety of exciting crafting goodies but the shelves were beginning to groan a little! So I have decided to move the crafting things to some stronger and deeper shelving in an alcove and move the CDs (yes, we still have those!) and paperbacks over to the other side of the room. I may be some time...!

Sending hugs,