Oh Happy Day

I've joined a group of gals who do card swaps.  We meet every other month and exchange one or two cards.  Each time we meet we decide on the next swap challenge -- that's to keep things interesting and for us to step out of our comfort zone.

This month the challenge was a word challenge.  Use a word (or words) as a focal point to the card front.  My mind was racing with the possibilities.  We have the new Cruisin' paper that has the letter tiles.  Oh, how perfect would that be!  I could make all sorts of words with that paper!

Instead I decided to create a card after looking through the Paper Crafts magazine.  On page 43 of the March/April 2012 edition there is a card called "Come Fly With Me Card".  This card is made of words that have been cut from a piece of cardstock (this was then raised with foam tape).  Under the letters of the words are cut butterflies arranged in the color of the rainbow.  THAT was an awesome card and the card I wanted to replicate!!!

Working with my Cricut Art Philosophy Cartridge and the craft room, I created my cut out for the top of my card.  The inspirational card was a 6"x6" card, and I didn't want mine to be that big.  I shrunk mine down to 4"x4" -- that way I wouldn't have to use as many cut out butterflies (good thinking on my part)!  After the top cardstock was designed and cut out, I detached my Cricut from the computer to cut my butterflies.  I choose to cut both butterfly images found on Art Philosophy.  The colors I chose were Holiday Red, Sunset, Sunny Yellow, Sweet Leaf, Lagoon, Pacifica, and Gypsy.  All of those go well with the Cocoa top. 

While those butterflies were being cut, I marked the inside of each letter on the white background.  That way I knew what area my butterflies needed to cover.  I folded my butterflies to add dimension and then I used liquid glass to adhere them to the card front.

Oh Happy Day before the top went on.

As I was gluing on butterflies, it occurred to me that making the card smaller might not have been the best idea.  Mind you, I made 16 cards -- 8 for the exchange and 8 for my customer's order.  Thankfully that was going to be enough cards this month.  As you can see, some of the colors had more butterflies than others, but on the whole a lot.

No, I did not count how many butterflies went on each card, but there are 60+ butterflies.  Each card is unique because of it.  Finally I was done gluing on the butterflies!  I put some thick 3-D Foam tape on the backside of the top so it sits above the butterflies.  After the top went on, I cut some more larger butterflies for the top.  I cut a 1/2" Sunkiss Yellow butterfly and a 3/4" butterfly in Lagoon and Sweet Leaf.  The Lagoon butterfly was stamped with the corresponding stamp from the Lucy Workshop on the Go stamp set.  The Sunkiss Yellow butterfly was sponged in Sunny Yellow and had some holes added to them.  The Sweet Leaf butterfly was sponged in the same color and had some Opaques added for the body.  And that got me to the finished card!

  I am really happy with the results.  If I were to do this again, I would make the card larger so the words could be larger, therefore the butterflies could be larger, and fewer.