Birthday Butterflies

The challenge this time at A Blog Named Hero is to create a one-layer card. I find one-layer cards to be hard to create, simply because you have to plan them out carefully. Especially in one like this, with several visual "layers," you really have to keep in mind what you're doing.

Even though this card is my design, the technique for the butterflies was inspired by one of the lessons in Online Card Classes' "Stretch Your Dies" class. Dawn Woleslagle, of WPlus9, taught that particular lesson, on masking stamped images. It requires a stamp set that has coordinating dies. I decided to make a feminine card, using Hero Arts' "Antique Flowers & Butterflies" stamp & die set.

Because I wanted the butterflies and greeting to be the front-most elements, I had to mask them first. I die cut 3 large & 2 medium butterflies from Simon Says Stamp's masking paper, using the dies in the set. After determining where to put the greeting, I stuck down my masks. I stamped the greeting, from Hero Arts' "Year Round Sentiments" set, on the card in Hero Arts' Soft Granite mid-tone shadow ink. That particular stamp has both words on one line. Since I wanted it in a more compact space, I cut the stamp apart, and stamped each word separately. I then masked off that area with more masking paper.

I taped a stencil from Prima (name unknown) over the front of my card base. Then I blended Distress inks in Cracked Pistachio, Tattered Rose, Squeezed Lemonade, and Mermaid Lagoon over that. The Mermaid Lagoon ended up being a bit stronger than I liked, but I went with it anyway. When I lifted the stencil, I felt the white of the card base was a bit too stark, so I blended Scattered Straw Distress ink over the whole front, to tone it down a bit.

After peeling up my masks, I used the butterfly stamps to stamp in the open spaces. I had to use my Stamp-a-ma-Jig to get them placed right, because the card wouldn't fit in my MISTI as I had it oriented. After I'd stamped all the butterflies, again in Soft Granite, I colored them with colored pencils in the pink/red range. Finally, I rounded the top and bottom right corners with my 1/4" Corner Chomper.

I'm also entering this card in the following challenges:

a2z Scrapbooking's April challenge: "Stencil"
Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday Challenge: "Make Your Own Background"