Butterflies and cogs

Today's project has been created over many different stages!   I'll try my best to remember them all!  It started life as a white sheet of card which I stamped the butterfly stamp from Crafty Individuals using Flitterglu and then added flakes.   It then remained in my craft box for ages (when I flitterglu I tend to do a few to make the most of the glue!).  When I rediscovered my butterflies I thought I would play around with contrasting with a dark ink - so out come the favourite Distress Inks and I started to apply colours...  browns, a bit of yellow, a touch of mahogany - all warm tones to compliment the gold.  I then stamped the script and postmark background using a Creative Expressions stamp and Distress Ink.  I then got artists block... just couldn't decide what to do to finish the piece off... so once again it sat in my craft box for a couple of weeks.

I was given a lovely Tim Holtz stamp which I wanted to play with and when rummaging in my backgrounds box, I found this and thought it would be perfect.  A little detail was needed on the right hand side, so I picked out my cogs border mask and run it through as an embossed detail with my Cuttlebug.  A little Gilding wax to highlight the detail gave me a good base. 

I stamped my words onto a separate card and drew boxes round each word.  I added a little distress ink - mainly yellow tones so it took away the starkness of the white card and then cut out each word and mounted it onto my card.

It took a while.. but got there in the end!  So if you get stumped with a project - don't bin it... put it in your stash and come back to it.. sometimes you rediscover it when you have a new stamp or topper in your collection - or sometimes another day just brings a fresh idea!

happy crafting

Jane

PS... and finally... we may not have won..this time!.....  but I'm displaying our runners up badge with pride!

www.aldridgecrafts.co.uk