Visit to the craft show, and some butterfly cards

It was a pretty busy week for me last week.  A yucky topic for TAFE that I wanted to finish as quickly as possible, plus family coming at the end of the week meant no time for craft!  My mum rang a few weeks earlier to say she was coming down for the local Craft show.  So I thought I might as well invite the rest of my family for a slightly early birthday party.  But the craft show part of the visit was a major dilemma for me, as I had spent bucket loads of money at the craft show last year, and couldn't see how I would be able to manage it on this year's tight budget.  In the end, though, Rob convinced me I should go, as I don't see my mum that much, let alone do stuff with her, so I wrote the entry fee off as "quality mother/daughter time" and away I went!

Here's what I spent a total of $25.80 on, well within the budget I set myself of $40.  5 rolls of double sided tape, a gorgeous set of unmounted butterfly stamps, a set of 10 super cute metal birds, and 3 laser-cut butterflies.  I bought those thinking they wold be fun to try as masks, and I could still use them on a layout once I was done.
Then mum went back with my sister the next day, who added a couple of little goodies into my birthday present, including these tiny alpha stickers and cute little UM stamp sets (with yet more butterflies!)

So it will come as no surprise that when I finally sat down at my craft desk on Sunday afternoon, what I felt like making was . . . butterfly-themed cards!  The first thing I wanted to try was using my laser cut butterflies as a mask.  The problem being, of course, that I don't own any of those mists that are so popular right now.  So first thing I tried was to flick watered down paint over it.







As you can see, the result was less than spectacular.  The paint was just too wet and the mask too fine.

The next thing that I tried was good old sponging from a pigment ink pad.  I have heaps of these sponges I made by gluing ordinary kitchen sponges onto blocks of wood sitting in a drawer, so it was great for one to see some use.  The result was a little better, but I was never going to get all the super-fine detail.  I finished the card off with a "banner" made of out a scrap of card and some machine stitching.

Finally, I made this card with some of my gorgeous new stamps.  I used the colours from what was the current challenge at ColourQ, but didn't post it soon enough to actually enter the challenge.  I also based it on a sketch from Pagemaps.  I had printed the sketch out and written next to it in pencil, "really cool prize", which it is, 5 Basic Grey 6" pads plus 5 flourishes stamp sets.  The problem is, I realized tonight, that of course you need a US postal address to be eligible to win the prize!  I decided not to let that stop me entering, in the unlikely event of winning, I'm sure I can find at least one US reader who would enjoy using this prize on my behalf.