Floating Butterflies Birthday Card Part 2

Warning – picture-rich post!

Continuing to work on this 3-D card for a friend’s birthday – if you want to see the first part, please go here.

I realised that I had not cut enough frames to complete the card, so I cut a couple more (a spare one to go in my stash) and I also cut some more butterflies while I was at it. I have plenty for the card, but these can go in my stash too, to be inked at a later date for future projects.

The next step was fun. I wanted to cut a decorative piece to attach inside the card, visible through the aperture on the front.

Every time I am using inks, I mop up by spritzing the craft sheet with water and wiping it up with a piece of kitchen paper. I am careful to limit the colours I use on each sheet, and once they are completely covered with ink, they are stored away in a pizza box to be used in projects. I love going through this box and enjoying all the vibrant colours! An added bonus is that kitchen paper is 2-ply, so once it is dry, you can pull the two layers apart, and you get two identical sheets of inked paper.

I went through the box to find one I liked, that would go with this project, and was very pleased with this particular one, which is very richly coloured, with some nice splodges on it, and which would contrast with the background of my card.

I opened up another pizza box, this time containing acetate scraps. I keep a lot of this, cutting up packaging if it has decent-sized flat pieces. There are different thicknesses in the box too, so there is usually something that will do for a project. Acetate has so many uses.

In this case, I needed two pieces – one to make the window in the aperture on the front of the card, and the other from which to cut the spiral which is the main feature of this card. For the window, it wasn’t important how thick the acetate was, so I chose a fairly thin piece, but for the spiral, it needed to be rigid enough not to collapse in use.

Last time I made this card, I remember having difficulty with the spiral. There isn’t a template for this, and on the original Youtube video it wasn’t really clear what would work best. This time I decided to keep the final test piece, as a template in case I want to do this project again.

This is my second attempt. I used my Martha Stewart circle cutter with a pencil to draw the circle – in this case with a 4 inch diameter.

I marked the centre first with a cross, and lined this up in the centre of the circle cutter, and ran around with the pencil in the “4-inch” hole. The clear central part of this tool rotates on a ball-bearing. It has the added advantage of being exactly the same size as the base of my little fabric caddy that I keep my tools in, so as well as being a useful place to store it, it also acts as a revolving base. I was very pleased when I discovered this.

I cut the spiral in paper first, and once I was satisfied that it would work by attaching it temporarily to the inside of the card with a couple of spots of Prit glue, I used the template to cut the spiral in acetate.

With a pencil, I traced around the inside of the aperture onto the inside of the card, to mark the position of the inked kitchen paper.

I moved the inked kitchen paper around under the aperture until I was happy with the patterning on it for this project. I held it firmly and went around again with my pencil, creating a cutting line – this was quite hard to do because the colour was pretty intense and I had a job to make it show up sufficiently, and also, I had to be careful that the pencil did not tear the paper.

Once it was marked, I cut it out, and applied it to the inside of the card, lining it up with the pencil lines I’d made, and attached it with soft matt gel medium, using a brush, and then smoothing it out with a palette knife, and then left it to dry.

I took a CD pen to mark the acetate for the frame. These pens are excellent for marking on shiny paper. I drew a line just in from the edge of the aperture to show me where to cut the acetate to fit. The acetate shape had to be large enough to cover the aperture completely, but not so large that it would extend beyond the cut frame which would eventually be stuck down to cover the edge.

The acetate window in place.

Because I omitted to cut enough frames, I did not have one available for inking when I inked the background and butterflies, so I had to colour the new white frame, using distress stains.

Both the inner frames in place, attached with Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive.

The card folded closed, showing the inked kitchen paper through the acetate window, and with the second gold frame in place to finish the aperture.

Time to add the embellishments. To begin, I laid the acetate spiral in place inside the card.

First I added the “Happy Birthday” sentiment and the “60,” both of which I had cut out with Sheba, the top layers being sprayed along with the butterflies and the shadow layers being cut from gold mirror card. The banner for the “Happy Birthday” was sprayed as well, and the two layers arranged to provide maximum contrast. You can see that I have also arranged some butterflies on the spiral inside the card.

Using my alcohol pen and a couple of different colours of alcohol ink, I added some colour to the gold butterflies and just touched the pen to the sprayed butterflies. I had layered some of these.

Here are some of the completed butterflies. When I layered them, I flipped up the wings of the top layer, and stuck it to the bottom layer with a thick blob of Pinflair gel glue, so that when it dried, the wings would not get flattened.

A couple of pictures showing the spiral inside the card. This is a bit difficult to photograph because the spiral is transparent and therefore not really visible (which is the whole idea), and also being at different levels, not everything is in focus, but you get the idea, and the fact that the floating butterflies cast a shadow, adding to the impression of depth.

On the left-hand side you can see that I have applied a small ink-sprayed circle, embellished with a gold butterfly. This covers the end of the acetate spiral.

Here is another “Happy Birthday” sentiment on the inside of the card, this time without a background banner layer, and I’ve deliberately kept the colours fairly light. You can clearly see some of the masked butterfly shapes n the background here.

The card front, pretty well finished. I have glued down the butterflies using Pinflair glue to keep the wings up. The butterflies through the window do not yet have any alcohol ink embellishment.

Turning my attention to the back of the card, I used a cut-out formed when creating the frames, and coloured it with distress inks to co-ordinate with the card, and added some water spatters which I then blotted off with kitchen paper. I did a draft of the lettering on a piece of scrap paper and traced it off onto the shaped card on my light panel, using a permanent black marker. After this, I filled in the letters with a sanguine marker and highlighted the letters with a white gel pen.

Here is the greeting panel stuck down onto the back of the card.

Here are the final photos of the completed card. You can see that I have added some alcohol ink to the gold butterflies on the spiral inside.

The next photo was taken from a slightly different angle, giving a view through the acetate window, showing the butterflies flying in the opening.

Some detail photos.

A full view of the inside of the card, showing the floating butterflies on the acetate spiral.

The right side of the inside of the card.

The sentiment on the inside of the card. In this photo you can clearly see the butterflies on the background, created with the mask-and-spray technique.

Turning to the back of the card, again you can clearly see the mask-and-spray butterflies.

Detail of the greeting panel.

Again, on these detail shots of the back of the card, you can see the mask-and-spray butterflies.

I think this is a card worthy of a special friend celebrating a special birthday!

Floating Butterflies Birthday Card Part 1

A friend has recently celebrated a significant birthday, so I thought I’d make her a posh card. I have been working in Inkscape quite a bit lately, designing some new cut files for Sheba, my Cougar cutting machine which is now up and running again, and I’ve been looking back at some of my old files that I used for previous projects, and decided that instead of designing a new project from scratch, I’d revamp an old one that I was particularly pleased with, with a few variations.

This is a rather special card with lots of butterflies, and when you open it, more butterflies appear to float in mid-air, being attached to a spiral cut from acetate, attached to the left and right sides of the inside of the card.

You can see my original one here.

Cutting the Shapes

Here is a picture of the gold mirror card being cut on Sheba.

The mat removed from the machine, with the cut card still in place.

The cut-out pieces. You can see that I have cut two gold frames and quite a lot of butterflies. The lacy butterflies are overlays to be stuck onto coloured card.

At the top left of the photo there are quite a few small gold butterflies. These were cut with a Stampin’ Up butterfly punch from the remaining piece of card after cutting the shapes on the machine, and from another offcut of gold card. I don’t like to waste any! If I don’t use all these butterflies on the card, it doesn’t matter because they will go into my stash.

Also in the picture you can see some “Happy Birthday” sentiments. These are actually shadow layers, and the text, cut from other card, will be overlaid, to reveal a narrow gold mat layer.

I also cut two very narrow rings which were measured to fit on the lids of some small papier mache boxes which I am altering at the moment, and the circles are the pieces cut from their centres. There is also a curved banner mat layer which I shan’t be using for this project – it will go in my stash – and finally the mat layers for the numbers to go on the front of the card.

Here are the pieces cut from white card. I have overlaid the gold lacy butterflies on top of their underlay pieces to show how they will work. You can see that there are two banner pieces, onto which the “Happy Birthday” sentiment will go, and the card base which is A4, with an aperture cut in it. This will be covered with acetate on the back, through which you will see the butterflies on the acetate spiral.

I cut several “Happy Birthday” sentiments. I designed these some time ago, using the Edwardian Script font, and then editing it so that the words would cut as a single piece, and would not fall apart when cut. I cut these particular ones pretty small and Sheba, my Cougar cutting machine, did a good job.

To colour the card base and the embellishments, I used my “Mask-and-Spray” technique – I’ve done a separate post about it here.

I prepared a mock-up of a possible layout for the card. The “60” was originally going to be stuck down onto an acetate window that will be stuck to the back of the card base, behind the aperture – since finishing the card I’ve rethought this.

One of the things I love about this technique is the use of the kitchen paper to mop up the excess ink – I had to do this several times, because with all the ink, and spritzing with water to move the colour around and mix it, it all got pretty wet. Following what I’ve seen others do online, I rolled the whole kitchen roll over the piece. The ink soaked through several layers.

You end up with quite a lot of absolutely gorgeous coloured sheets. Each one, of course, is two-ply, and you can separate these, and you get double the quantity! I use these inked pieces in different projects, and when I’m using kitchen roll for any cleaning up purposes, I gradually build up the colour on individual sheets, which I keep in a box within easy reach – I choose one which already has some ink in a similar hue so that I don’t end up with a load of papers looking like mud! Once they are sufficiently covered, they go into another box ready for use. I hate throwing stuff away, and after all, there’s a lot of expensive ink soaked up into these papers, so why throw them away?

Wouldn’t you agree that this is a glorious result? – a spin-off that means that with the mask and spray technique, you end up with three different materials for projects – coloured cut pieces, a decorative background, and some soft kitchen paper to be used in a variety of ways.

Preparing the Pieces to Make the Card

Here is the collection of inked pieces together with the card base. The pieces include a couple of circles for use in the construction of the card pop-up, two overlapping banners for the sentiment, the sentiment itself, and the “60.”

Working on the sentiment, I made a mock-up of the text pieces with their gold shadow layers, and the two banner pieces, and thought that there wasn’t enough contrast, so I experimented with dabbing one of the text pieces with Seedless Preserves distress stain. This gave a good result.

Here is a mock-up of the front of the card, showing the completed sentiment pieces on top of their gold shadow layers, and the gold frame to finish the aperture in the card base. I stuck the cut sentiment pieces down using Crafter’s Companion Stick and Stay repositionable permanent spray adhesive, and the layers of the banner with Scotch Quick Dry adhesive.

In the next blog post, I will show how the card is assembled and finished.

Mask-and-Spray

I love this technique. I invented it myself (although of course others might also have done so, but I haven’t seen it done before!). It kills two birds with one stone – back in July 2012 when I first got my Dylusions spray inks, I cut a lot of flower pieces that I wanted to colour, and laid them down on a piece of card, and sprayed the inks. The pieces acted as masks. I then removed the pieces, which left white, unsprayed shapes where they had been, and replaced them the other way up, in different places on the background piece, and re-sprayed it. What I ended up with was a collection of pieces coloured on both sides in a gorgeous random fashion, and a great background with flower shapes, also in different random colours. (There are several posts about this in the July 2012 subfolder of this blog.)

I employed the technique again recently, as part of the Floating Butterflies card I made for a friend’s birthday, using the butterfly shapes I’d cut with Sheba (the name I have given to my Cougar cutting machine), and used the card base (also cut with Sheba) complete with its aperture, as the background piece, and then repeated the process so that the inside of the card was sprayed with random butterfly shapes too. I will soon be doing a couple of blog posts about making this card. I haven’t been able to upload these until now because I didn’t see my friend until yesterday, when I gave her the card, and it was under wraps till then!

This time I didn’t use watercolour paper, but cut the shapes from white American Cardstock 12 x 12 which is fabulous stuff to work with – it cuts like a dream on Sheba, and it seems to stand up very well to the amount of water you chuck at it with this technique. It’s also thinner than the watercolour paper I’ve got, and so it makes finer flowers, and it’s also less expensive! Watercolour paper is a bit of a pain to cut on Sheba because it seems rather dense and fibrous, but it cuts a lot better if you spritz it lightly with water once you’ve stuck it down on the cutting mat, and leave it for a few minutes to soak in. The American Cardstock is a lot more convenient all round, and is also available in the standard 12 x 12 size.

The next batch of photos are stills grabbed from the video I made, which will be on Youtube eventually, when I’ve had a chance to edit it.

The first one shows the beginning of the “mask and spray” technique.

Removing the butterflies after the first spraying, showing the white shapes underneath.

#Sometimes the ink is so wet that it creeps under the shapes but that doesn’t matter – it all goes to make the resulting background more random and undefined.

The next photo shows the butterflies being replaced in different places. The original white spaces will be sprayed with pure colour, and the already-sprayed background will get extra layers of colour, and the butterflies get their backs coloured in the process.

The piece being re-sprayed.

The butterflies removed again.

There were a few white spaces left, where I’d overlapped the butterfly pieces over original white bits, but these soon disappeared with further spraying.

In the past I’ve just done one spraying for either side of the butterflies, but in this case I did it more than once, till I got the result I wanted. Here are the butterflies being removed after the final spraying.

Some of the sprayed butterfly shapes. I love the variation in colour, and the fact that some look more textured than others.

The outside of the final background piece, which is the card base.

The inside of the card, duly masked and sprayed.

This is a very useful technique for producing nice random backgrounds and masterboards quite quickly and easily, and it also provides you with a good quantity of cut pieces (flowers, butterflies, etc.) to go in your stash to be used for other projects. It is also the most tremendous fun to do – really hands-on and messy and creative!