Butterflies card

I picked up my craft magazines again this afternoon and i decided to check my box of dies to see if I could try it. It's fair to say my collection of dies is quite small but I did find a couple of stencils which game me an idea - no Pinterest required this week!

I started off with a card, scrap paper, an ink blending tool and two different shades of green ink. First I put the card landscape over the scrap paper (to avoid any ink on the table!) and began by putting a layer of light green ink along the bottom, partially going off the edge of the card - I dabbed it on first to get as much ink off the sponge before rubbing along so all white space was covered. Next I took a darker green and repeated the process to layer the two shades together. This gave me a nice edge which had a grassy look to it.

Now for the stencil. I have one with multiple butterfly shapes and sizes on it so I decided to use two of these along with two more colours of ink - pink and purple. I placed the stencil in position and used the blending tool (with a fresh sponge for each colour) to apply first the purple butterflies and then the pink. I added 3 of each colour, spaced all over the card. I even have one flying off the top edge of the card, to do this I put the scrap paper along the fold so that the ink didn't spread and the edge stayed neat. Now as this is the first time I've used a proper stencil and needed to stay within the single space I didn't necessarily do a good job of that.

I was planning to put a sentiment of some kind on the card so I took one of my banner style stamps and on a thicker piece of white card, stamped the banner in black. I had planned to use another stamp for the sentiment but have found again I'm lacking in resources! Thank goodness for scrap paper and fairly neat writing. I added this to the card covering those main blotches of ink using double sided sticky dots to add a different layer to the card. I felt this didn't complete the card so I added a black die cut butterfly, also stick with the stick dots.

I will admit if I had planned this properly rather than taking my usual 'what does that look like' attitiude I would be even happier with the result - like the spacing of the butterflies, my ability to be tidy when using a stencil. As it is, I would still give it to a family member but I know for next time what I should or shouldn't do. Definitely a one I'll make again!