Hello there! I’d planned to post this card yesterday, but my internet at home has gone down so it’s had to wait until I was somewhere with a wifi connection! First world problem…! It’s another generic one with more butterflies, this time inspired by the colours at TGIF challenges with the themes of ‘tropical’ from Addicted to CAS and ‘butterflies’ from Just Us Girls

I started by stamping the wreath from the retired Stampin’ Up! ‘arrange a wreath’ set onto a square of card using ‘bermuda bay’. Unfortunately, I only have the SU colours in their Write markers and it didn’t give me very even coverage, so I sponged some ‘peacock feathers’ Distress Oxide and restamped it, which sorted it out. The topper then went onto a 5×5 card blank.

I then stamped several of the butterflies from another retired SU set (‘butterfly gala’) in black Archival. I used my Write markers in ‘mango melody’ and ‘melon mambo’ to blend the colour on the infill stamps before adding it. I also used a Micron pen to shade a bit more black onto the butterfly wings (more about why in a minute), then punched them out and added to the card with foam pads.

I finished by brushing the butterfly wings with Wink of Stella, so they shimmer – that never shows up in a photo!

Now this little blog can be a bit educational at times, and I wanted to explain how I chose to colour the butterflies (was I overthinking it…?!) I only know about a few British butterflies, but that wouldn’t fit Addicted to CAS’ ‘tropical theme’, so I had a quick Google and discovered the red lacewing, which lives in the sub-tropical forests of Asia. Bingo – TGIF’s colours worked perfectly! Here’s a link with a bit more info from the Cambridge Butterfly Conservatory: cambridge butterfly.com/cethosia-biblis/