Thursday, January 12, 2012

Negative Space Butterfly Card

This card was inspired by one seen on Two Peas in a Bucket.  The creator, Julie Campbell said,
" Sometimes I like to make several die cuts of the same image and am left with a sheet of patterned paper full of the remaining negative space.  Instead of throwing this paper out....I'll show you how to create a fun card using these remnants.
If you don't have a die cutter, you could also use this same technique with a hand-held punch."

This card appealed to me and gave me an opportunity to try a new technique but it took a long time to make! Since the butterflies are 1", there were 54 of them on the page so that took over 5 minutes just to cut. 

 I had to go out into the garage and (1) find a sewing machine, (2)  clean the dust off the case, (3) service the machine and test it before I could even start to use it.  That machine's been in the garage over a year, just gathering dust so I had to get it to room temperature before it could be used. Last night out temperatures dropped to the lowest we've had this winter and that poor machine was like a block of ice.  So, the quickest way to warm it up was with a blow dryer! Once it was serviced I had no problems stitching on the paper.  Guess I'll leave the machine handy so I can incorporate stitching on more cards.

I used Design Studio and the Indie Art cartridge to lay out a sheet full of butterflies.  Then mounted one of the butterflies on the scalloped ovals.  There's stitching around the outer edges of the card front and I embellished the oval with a Pearl Pen. 
 
I do like the way it turned out, but I'm reserving this technique until I have a need for another entire sheet of butterflies.  There are now fifty-one, one inch high, blue butterflies on my cutting mat.  Hmmm....now I need to go find a project for these too!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love this! The paper behind the negative space is like it was made for this! That Ribbon, ovals and light blue butterfly really set it all off! Thanks for sharing!

Unknown said...

This is really beautiful. That butterfly from Indie Art is one of my favorite cuts on a Cricut cartridge!