Lean on Me Flower Stem & Butterfly

I’ve been wanting to ink up a card with this beautiful butterfly from an American Craft Co. kit. I’ve been stumped with inks to use as the Distress line doesn’t have a total color match per se (and I just fell in love with the colors). So, the question was, how to set it off with a colored background with complementary stamps. I now have a pretty complete set of Tattered Angels Glimmer sprays, so I tried those and found the 3 purples were great for this.

I began by spraying a watercolor paper with the sprays, lightest all over and darkest in the corners, heat setting in between. I also spritzed a little Brutus Monroe Silver spray in strips. For a complementary soft green, I decided to emboss the flower bud stem from Unity’s Lean on Me using Sage embossing powder. Because I wanted to add color to the buds, I did this again an plain watercolor paper, fussy cut out the buds and adhered them over the original image. I then took a white and black pen and added shadows and highlights to the stems and buds. I added color to the buds using silver glitter ink, Pewter Perfect Pearls, Green Prima Metallic watercolor and a little purple Color Burst ink.

I then pulled out 2 coordinating Distress Oxide inks and stamped the flowers from the Lean on Me kit and a couple sprigs from Unity’s Insightful Meadows Kit. I added some white Distress Stain dots around and called it done. I then adhered the butterfly. I used a sentiment (the font matches perfectly with the stem, I thought) from Unity’s Magnolia Kit. I used a roller to add Color Burst paint to the stamp and stamped it out. I backed that with grey paper. I used a silver card base and added violet thread and crystal dots.

When I began taking pictures to post and trying different backgrounds, I remembered I had this special scarf I loved of Claude Monet Lilies, that I had picked as a souvenir at the Musee de l’Orangerie in Paris. This museum has an oval room filled with huge paintings of the water lilies, almost touching, giving a gorgeous surround experience. And the scarf almost matched colors...wow. Guess I really loved that color combination!

Hope you like this card! Till next time, happy crafting!