MULTI-HUED WATERCOLOR BUTTERFLY

This butterfly, created with the Butterflies Thinlits, is so precious and calls out to me constantly to use it in a creation. How can I possibly resist this call?

I had used this little guy in many cards in a vast array of ways. This time, I wanted to create a butterfly in a few colors. 

From watercolor paper, I die cut the butterfly. I "painted" the piece well with clear water using a flat brush. I then dropped in a few watercolor hues in a blue, a green and a bit of yellow. I kept dropping additional color until I was happy with the results. I tried to be patient enough to let it air dry. But, you know how that goes. After a few minutes, I hit it with the heat tool.

From that point on, I was stumped for a few days. Honestly! Everything I tried to put behind the butterfly was the wrong choice. He just did not show up well enough. After numerous failures, I finally let him sit for a couple days, trying something different here and there as I thought of it.

I knew for sure that I wanted to use this lovely patterned paper from the Cupcakes & Carousels Designer Series Paper Stack (page 9 in the Occasions Catalog, which is retiring as of May 31). The colors were exactly right, and the subtlety of the paper was perfect. The problem was trying to find something to use with it.

I FINALLY realized that the beautiful Lace Doilies (page 51 of the Occasions catalog) 

would be the ideal addition.

But, when I place the butterfly over the doily, they were both too busy to complement each other. I finally hit upon the solution.

I adhered just the body of the butterfly to a piece of Whisper White cardstock, carefully trimming around the edges so I had a solid white butterfly as another layer underneath the watercolored one.

To the lower section of the card, I added a neat strip of washi tape in coordinating colors. 

The sentiment was stamped to match the card and punched out with the Washi Tape Punch 

(oh, how I wish that punch was not retired!).

Besides the slightly popped up sentiment, the only dimension comes from the butterfly, 

whose delicate wings are slightly tipped up from the solid white wings.

I added Clear Wink of Stella to the entire butterfly for a little shimmer and bling.

 The Wink of Stella shows up a little bit in the following photo.

Using watercolors, you can make your butterfly any color combination you'd like. 

And then position it on a good DSP pattern choice.

Be sure to pick up some of these doilies before they are gone, gone, gone! On one side, they are Whisper White, while the flip side is Very Vanilla. And, they can be cut apart in a multitude of ways to achieve different looks for different uses!

Watercolor

Smiles.