Inlay Shimmery Butterflies Technique

My craft space is a small area off the corner of my bedroom, so every once in a while when it starts to look a little chaotic, I need to organize and remove a few things. At the moment I am in the midst of reorganizing and a major tidy up of my crafty space. While cleaning up a shelf I rediscovered my water colour shimmer powders. It has been a very long time since I have pulled these out and played around with them. Which got me to thinking that these fun powders combined with the Large Butterfly Die would make some really pretty shimmery butterflies. Bonus the inlay technique instructions below gives you enough butterfly parts (parts in a crafty way, not gruesome poor butterfly way) to create two cards.

Get the Look:

• PREP WORK:

  • Goal is to create 2 water colour panels to die cut butterflies out from. First water colour panel is a softer colour for the butterfly outline and second panel is a richer more shimmery version of the first for the inlay peices.

  • First I simply added water to the shimmer powders and painted the water colour onto 2 panels to create the softer colour. (Image A)

  • Dry the 2 panels, then rewet one of them to shake the shimmer powder on directly. (Image B). If the powder is not flowing like you wish, add a little more water.

  • OPTIONAL: With the extra shimmer water colour on my glass mat I smooshed some black water colour card stock into it (this I later use to create the butterfly bodies).

  • ALTERNATIVE OPTIONS: If you don’t happen to have shimmer powders you can get the look or similar look with straight watercolours or watercolours mixed with pearl or use your LDRS reinkers.

  • OPTIONAL: Die cut 4-6 few extras of the 2 butterflies from the Large Butterfly Die set. This gives you the option to layer up butterflies with a couple of extra die cuts if you like adding extra depth.

  • Pick out the area on each water colour panel you like and die cut out 1 side facing butterfly and 2 front facing butterflies from each panel. You will end up with a total of 2 side facing and 4 front facing butterflies.

  Building the cards:

• Using the Slimline Scallop Die Set, die cut out a light blue background for main card and cream coloured background for bonus card.

• Stamp the choosen sentiments on the 2 stitched panels. Since Mother’s Day is coming up I choose Mother’s Day sentiment from the Special Occasions Stamp Set for the main card and a Birthday wish from the new It’s Just a Number stamp set for the bonus card.

• On the light blue panel stamp the butterfly (from the Tulip stamp set) in white pigment ink to create a subtle texture to the background. Unfortunately in my case it turned out to be too subtle and barely shows in the pictures, oh well.

• Adhere blue and cream panels to slim line card bases.

• CARD 1 WITH INLAY: (Blue background). Time to build the inlay butterflies. You can either build the inlay butterflies directly to your blue background or build the butterflies on a some inexpensive thin white cardstock.

• For either option pop out the inner peices from the richer coloured butterflies and inlay them into the white outline butterfly. Optionally add additional white butterfly outlines and then the softer matching colour butterfly out line. If you prefer not to build up simply leave off the additional white outlines.

• If you built butterflies on white cardstock you will need to trim excess white card stock and adhere butterflies to the card panel

• Die cut out the centres of the butterfly with the either black card stock or the ink smooshed black card. Taking some scissors shape the centre body how you like. Glue on top of the butterfly.

• BONUS 2ND CARD (Cream background) Using the remaining water coloured die cut butterfly outlines adhere to the card base. If you want your butterflies to have further depth, layer them up with additional die cut butterflies.

• Finish off your card with sequins and gems if desired. I chose not to let the shimmer shine : )

IMAGE A

image b

image C

Hopefully this post has reminded you to pull out something perhaps you haven’t used for a while such as shimmer powders. Which do you prefer the inlay butterflies or the outlines? Happy Papercrafting : )