I was so happy with my previous resist embossed swallowtail card that I decided to do it again . Using a large background stamp as the focal point of the card doesn’t give many options but I like the stamp too much to relegate it to the background. At the moment anyway.
After using the embossing buddy to remove any static, I stamped the image in versamark and used the white embossing powder. This time I decided to use more colour and sponged with both pumpkin pie and daffodil delight in more or less a circular fashion. I added just a touch of real red towards the outside. I think this gives a completely different look from last time. I then cropped the butterfly and added a mat of pumpkin pie. This was then mounted on a base of daffodil delight. Let me know which you like best.
I have only used my large background stamp, the Stampin’ Up! Swallowtail set a couple of times and I decided it was time to play with it again.
I used the embossing buddy on the very vanilla paper and then stamped the image in versamark and used the clear embossing powder. After heating the image, I used rich razzleberry and using a sponge, started in the centre of the image letting the ink fade as I sponged to the edges. The thing to remember about sponging is that you can add ink, you can’t remove it so it’s best to blot the sponge on scrap paper to get a sense for how much ink you have. The embossed image resists the ink (hence the name of the technique). After I’d sponged the entire paper, I used some daffodil delight to gently colour the middle parts of the butterfly. I mounted this onto a rich razzleberry base.
Last week I was creating a card for the Pals Paper Arts Challenge and I used the Stampin’ Up! Swallowtail stamp set. Whilst I was making it, I needed an insert for the inside of the card to hide where the blendabilities had bled through. I first tried stamping the butterfly in old olive but it was rather in your face on opening the card so I used crushed curry instead. But I saved the old olive version since I think it looks rather majestic. This stamp set is sold as one of the background stamps but personally I can’t see using it as a background, it deserves to be the focal point of the card. I took my butterfly and adhered it to an old olive base. I lined the envelope with the backgrounds DSP brights in old olive.
Stamping this in just the one colour gives a totally different look from last week’s card. Whilst I was considering what to do last week, I looked up Swallowtail butterflies on wikipedia and was amazed by the enormous range of colours. I can see that I am going to play with this stamp quite a lot! I also really like the monochromatic look of this card and think that I’ll try this in a few other colours – even though these may not be true to life. I think that a number of these monochromatic cards in different colours would make a nice gift.
I’m just squeezing in under the wire on this challenge – it closes at 1pm today. My friend Jen calls me a rebel; I’m not so sure but here I am again refusing to go in the obvious direction! Here’s the colour palette.
I thought about doing a fall themed card but then I remembered that I’ve just received the Stampin’ Up! Swallowtail stamp and I haven’t used it yet. I also have crushed curry embossing powder and I haven’t used that either. So the direction was set. I started by embossing the image in crushed curry on pumpkin pie card stock but it didn’t grab me so here’s where I went in the end:
This is embossed in black on crushed curry. I then took my old olive blendabilities and used the medium one to colour the body and the wings next to the body changing to the light blendability as I got further away from the body. After that I used the dark pumpkin pie blendability to colour the edge of the wings and the medium to colour next to it. This left an uncoloured crushed curry portion in the middle of the wings.
I had angled the butterfly because I was intending on adding a sentiment but after the colouring I decided that I really liked the clear space around it. I think the butterfly needs the space to breathe.
Since I coloured with blendabilities right onto the card, the colours bled through to the other side. In order to hide that (mostly) I glued a very vanilla piece of card onto the other side with another image of the swallowtail – this time in crushed curry having stamped off once. I tried it in old olive but it seemed a bit of a shock on opening the card. I liked the old olive on very vanilla though and saved that for future use. Here’s the inside of the card now:
