Gillybean Crafting : West Coast Creators Blog Hop

It's that time again! Blog hopping with my fancy friends from the West Coast Creators team I am part of. This month we chose all things butterflies. So get ready for projects featuring the NEW Butterfly Brilliance Collection (like mine), as well as Butterfly Gala or Floating & Fluttering.

I have so many ideas for the products from this new collection but I was short on time so I picked one.

I knew I wanted to play around with watercolouring and white embossing powder so I started there. I cut a piece of watercolour paper big enough to stamp & die cut the images from. I then spritzed it with water and begin adding ink using my water painters. I chose to work with Magenta Madness, Bumbleebee & Terracotta Tile. I tried to swirl the colours throughout the page and mix them within each other so that no one butterfly would end up a single colour.

Once the watercolouring was dry, I stamped the single butterfly image using Versamark Ink. I dipped the entire page in White embossing powder (shaking off the excess) and then set it with my heat tool. One run through with my die cutting machine and I now had 6 very unique butterflies to add to my card.

Now what to do with these gorgeous creatures?

I decided to play with an idea that I had recently seen in a card by Emma Goddard - Coastal Crafter. It involves layering a piece of DSP on a white cardstock base but cutting it on a diagonal and layering the stamped images across edge of the DSP.

I cut the DSP to be 4-1/8" x 5-1/2" so that I would have a thin white border on the sides. I cut the diagonal at random and then placed the DSP to ensure a thin white border at the bottom edge as well.

Next to layer all of the butterflies. With a card this size, and in portrait, I couldn't possibly use them all so I left the big one for another project and instead worked with only 5. It took some fiddling and creative layering even then to be able to get them all to fit.

A word to the wise, if you think you might have an element that slightly overhangs your card edge, work with your card sitting centred on your envelope to be sure it will still fit.

Last but not least was to add a greeting. This stamp set doesn't have any so I paired it up with one of my fave stamp sets, Lovely You (love these fonts). I stamped again in versamark on a remaining bit of my watercolour paper and again heat embossed with white. I then fussy cut and added to my card front with Stampin' Dimensionals.

I'm really pleased with the end result, I hope you like it as well!

This new collection is so amazing to create with - almost does the work itself! It helps that these stamped images are so amazingly detailed and the Butterfly Bijou DSP is to die for. (Check back regularly for new posts with my other ideas)

The bundle (stamps & dies) will be carried forward into the new annual catalogue (live on May 4th) but this DSP is only available until May 3rd so do not delay in ordering some if it is on your list.

Thanks so much for visiting my blog. Be sure to 'hop' to as many of the others as you can!

You will be so inspired by all the amazing designs!