Shimmering Elegance

The Always Playing With Paper Challenge Blog gave us this gorgeous image to be inspired by this week.  The Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge for this week is "Emboss It" I wanted to paint another card using my favorite butterfly from the Stampendous Pen Pattern Butterflies and Coordinating Dies. There are actually 3 different butterflies in the set, but I love this large graphic one.  I wanted something a bit different looking so I tried to combine a few different methods in my card; Stamping, Heat Embossing, Dry Embossing, Watercolor, DTP, Shimmer Spray and Die Cutting.  I needed three to play over at the CAS Mix Up Challenge. 

   

I started with a 4.25 x 5.5 inch piece of Canson Bristol Watercolor Paper then stamped the butterfly in Versamark and heat embossed it using Simon Says Stamp Antique Gold Embossing Powder.  I love this color because it's a warm rich gold than looks good with everything.  Using a #4 Silver Black Velvet Paint Brush, I painted the butterfly with a couple of Twinkling H20's in Ocean Wave and Egyptian Gold.  I chose that type of paint because it has a shimmer to it when dry. You could also add Perfect Pearls + Water Solution to any other coloring medium to get the same effect if you don't have Twinkling H20's. You can make it more or less shimmery by how much of the pigment powder you add to your water.

Once I had that painted, I set it aside to dry and grabbed a piece of A2 sized Stamper's Select White Cardstock. I ran that through my Cuttlebug machine using the Embossing Sandwich with a Taylored Expressions Embossing Folder called Leafy Vine.  I felt it was the perfect backdrop for the butterfly since mostly when you see butterflies they are around flowers or foliage of some kind.

To add a bit more interest to this background piece, I used Papertrey's Lemon Tart Ink and went Direct To Paper (DTP) with it.  Because the design is so close together, this worked very well at getting the color on the most raised areas.  Once I had that done, I spritzed it with some Glimmer Mist in Iridescent Gold and set it aside to dry. The spray mixes with all the color and makes it look so well blended. 

I wanted to add a bit more texture and dimension to the card front, so I cut three of the Poppy Stamps Massa Leaf Background.  I left these in the negative so that I could do some ink blending on them using a Ranger Mini Ink Blending Tool.  It helps to hold the positive in place without bending it which could have been tricky since the stems are so small. Once I had these inked up, I sprayed them with the same Iridescent Gold Glimmer Mist and set that aside to dry for a few minutes before I pulled the positive pieces from the negative place holder.  The butterfly in this set is so large and I knew I could only accommodate a small sized greeting so I cut the Simon Says Stamp Circle Smile Die from a scrap of gold foil cardstock.  I wanted the area behind it to be smooth so I used the ink blended negative scrap from the leafy branches to cut a positive circle to go behind the Smile die cut.  

I assembled everything to a 5.25 x 4 inch top folding note card using mostly Multi Medium Matte but I added a couple of strips of foam adhesive behind the butterfly's body and I used my ATG to adhere the background panel to the card base.  I used my Teflon Bone Folder to "curl" the top wings but I adhered the bottom wings to the card base directly with Multi Medium Matte.

My girlfriend and my daughter were both gaga over this card so I think I'll be making another one so I can send one to each of them.  Thank you so much for stopping by today.  Please feel free to leave a comment if you like.  I'm going to get busy painting another butterfly!