Make a Beautiful 3D Butterfly for Your Handmade Greeting Card

Happy Friday morning!
Today I have a greeting card made from the gorgeous Kirby Teesdale Paper Pack by The Paper Studio and Core'dinations Cards and Envelopes set. I have also included, a short tutorial to show how to make the 3D butterfly, and a materials list so that you can make your own card, but first things first.
Hope everyone is warm. It's freezing here in Western Pennsylvania and my furnace hasn't stopped running. Although, I have really enjoyed the beautiful snowflakes floating past my windows. Just as long as I don't have to go out into the snow, I can appreciate how lovely it looks. 
Speaking of looking lovely, below is paper that I will be adding to my "All-Time Favorite Papers" list. The colors are very soft and the designs are beautiful. I love the look of the paper so much that I wanted to bring an element of it to life. 

Card measures 5.5in x 5.5in and is decorated with paper from
Paper Studio's Kirby Teesdale Paper Pack

Matching paper was added to the inside of the envelope. The paper goes about half way down the inside and is only adhered at the top. Anything more is not necessary. I used a corner rounding punch and placed the top edge of the paper just under the glue strip of the envelope.

To give the white cardstock and sentiment a little color I lightly sponged them with Tim Holtz Distress Ink in the colors Victorian Velvet and Tea Dye. Glossy Accents was used on the sentiment and on both large butterflies to further accentuate them.

Adhering a three dimensional butterfly and a swirl of adhesive pearls was the last touch.

Materials List

Kirby Teesdale Paper Pack by the Paper Studio

Core'dinations White, Smooth, Square Cards and Envelopes sets

Tools List

Paper-cutter

X-Acto Knife

Adhesive

Black Sharpie (fine tip) 

Sizzix Thinlits Sentiments (660218)

Martha Stewart corner rounding punch

Glossy Accents

Card Assembly

White base card (5.5in x 5.5in)

Pink mat (Just 1/8 of an inch bigger than the front of the card)

Front of card (5.25in x 5.25in)

Instructions for Butterfly (This is your last step when making this card)

1) Use an X-Acto knife to cut out the same butterfly from another sheet of paper. You'll want to be careful to keep the butterfly's head intact, but there is no need to cut out the antenna. Just leave them behind.

2) I decided to draw over the black lines of the butterfly's wings with a black Sharpie marker to make the lines darker and stand out more.

3) Keeping the body of your butterfly flat, bend the wings into the shape that you would like them to be in when your card is finished. 

4) Now flatten out the wings a little bit so you can put your Glossy Accents on without it sliding off the wings. Bending the wings now will make it easier to move and shape them once the Glossy Accents is dry.

5) When the butterfly is completely dry go ahead and very gently shape the wings. Be careful not to crack the shiny coat by bending them too much.

6) Place adhesive only on the butterfly's body and adhere it right on top of the same butterfly that is on the front of your finished card. 

That's it!

NOTE: There is another way to achieve the 3D look. Before assembling your card, just cut around the wings of the butterfly you want to stand out. Then shape the wings and add Glossy Accents. No need for a second butterfly. Here is a card that I did using that technique.

You can find this card here.

Happy crafting and thanks for stopping by. Stop back again for new projects!

Scrapbook Layout and Greeting Card Sketches to Have Fun With

I hope you're all enjoying your summer. I'm leaving for a two week camping trip this weekend with my family and friends and can't wait! This will be a much needed break after my craft room makeover, trying to clean out our shed and organizing my main living spaces. I'm always amazed at how much "stuff" my family accumulates.
  This week I decided to make some sketches for future projects. I had certain borders and flowers in mind, but after making the sketches I realized that many different looks can be created from them.  

  If you decide to use a sketch or more than one I would love to see your interpretation when I return from vacation. I welcome you to place the number(s) of the sketch you used and the URL to your project in the comment section as a reply to "Links". There is an example below. Have fun!

 
 1) Scrapbook Layout Sketch

  2) Scrapbook Layout Sketch
with rolled corners and border punched edges

 

  3) Greeting Card Sketch

 

  4) Greeting Card Sketch

  5) Greeting Card Sketch

Example for sharing your project in comments

Happy Crafting!

Flower Box Greeting Card

Hello everyone! I'm so excited today to share with you a new kind of card (new to me) that I had so much fun making.

A greeting card that transforms into a decorative box just by opening it. I love it! 

I was surprised how easy this was to make. It's a bit time consuming with the measurements and cutting, but well worth it. I had caught a video on YouTube by +Wendy Cranford and another video by +Tina Weller that inspired me to give it a shot. I have placed the links for them at the bottom of this post. They take you through each step of the project and Tina Weller provides links to who inspired her to try it as well. 

Initially I was only going to use purple and green, but the project just grew as I went with more and more color. I love the way it turned out and I will continue to see what decorative accents I can come up with as there is no limit to the possibilities. Spring is barely here and I'm already thinking about the cute Christmas cards I can make with this design.

I used ek flower punches and Sizzix die cuts to make the flowers and then I colored them with Rubber Stampede Dye based inks. Each flower got a gem or pearl embellishment and for the larger flowers I placed a button behind the pearl for more color.

Here is some of the equipment I used and the printed paper is from K&Company Susan Winget which is my favorite papers. I just can't get enough of them and use them in my projects often.

This is the card laying flat with the two flaps pulled down to expose the inside. I think it looks gorgeous already. I added a beautiful purple paper to the inside of the flaps from DCWV's Violet Leaf Stack.

Sorry about some fuzziness in the photos. The sun is just not cooperating and I find myself in odd positions to try and get a little light.

Links to Videos
Wendy Cranford
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiiGXr0UyEQ

Tina Wellers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XHN5WG2hOQ


I just came across this and noticed it was the exact measurements that I used. If you don't like videos because you'd rather see the measurements at a glance, this step-by-step tutorial from SplitCoastStampers makes it very easy.
http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/popupboxcard/
You can find an adorable version of this card by +Heather Kraafter
http://kraaftshaak.com/card-creating-fun-part-1-2/


A special "Thank you" for the How-To videos ladies



Happy Crafting!

Magnetic Burlap Card for Easter - From Card to Decoration

Hello everyone! I'm back in the crafting saddle again and ready to share a new card! A lot of thought went into this one and my goal was to use mostly burlap; so the background, the eggs, the grass, and basket accents are all burlap.

I was looking at greeting cards on Etsy and read in one of the descriptions that the card being sold didn't include an envelope. The reasoning behind this is because it was being sold as a decoration. I'm all for cards being a decoration, but was it really a decoration? It was a beautiful card that could definitely be framed or something, but does your everyday person frame their cards?  The recipient could just leave it on a mantle for a while, but is that truly a decoration or just a pretty card sitting on a mantle? I've also heard people state, "There is no way I would spend that much for a card that will just be thrown away". Well, even if it's not thrown away, what do you do with it? For the non-crafty person or the very busy person, that's a big question.

After some thought I decided to come up with something that really does make a card a decoration. It may not be the best answer and definitely not the only one, but this was my idea. I also want to add that people may be doing this already and I just haven't seen it. 

Make a card that the front lifts off to stand on it's own.

I placed magnetic strips between the decorative part of the card and the card itself. This allows the receiver to easily lift the front off of this #Eastercard and place it on his/her refrigerator, filing cabinet at work or where ever she wants. Then when Easter is over it can be placed with other Easter decorations and put back up next year.

 

 I had bought a pack of magnetic sheets for printing on and just cut some strips from one page. The strips are strong enough to stick to the refrigerator, but easily pulled from one another.

I cut the eggs out of paper-backed burlap (just free handed them as they don't need to be perfect just close in size) and then used markers to decorate them.

And here it is on the refrigerator :)
#Easterdecoration

Happy Crafting Everyone! 

Copyright © 2014 Angela Conklin - Heartedly Handcrafted
All Rights Reserved

Handmade Easter Egg Card

Hello Everyone! The best part about this project is that I could decorate an egg without stained fingers. It was a lot of fun and I'm thinking I may have to make a few more "egg" cards just to see what I can come up with. I love all colors, especially when they are used together, but I'm finding that I must favor green and pink when making cards and layouts because I seem to use them a lot.

I used an oval die to cut out the egg and a small round die to form the spots on the egg.

I love this pink textured paper. To embellish the card I used die cut flowers and adhesive flat-backed pearls. To keep consistent with the polka dots of the green paper I embossed smooth pink paper that I placed just behind the egg and used a green ribbon with polka dots.

Happy Crafting Your #eastercards and #eastereggs !

 

 

Valentines Day Card - Hot Air Balloon

Happy Valentines Day! Just a fun card

to celebrate the day :)

Thank you to Bird's Cards for the free digital image. There are a lot of fun digital images on her page.

 

I used cheap Cra Z Art colored pencils I picked up at K-mart which I like. They are soft and the color is bright.

 I wanted clouds that looked like a child drew them to float in the sky to make the card fun.

The hearts are just sticky foam hearts that I used a blue colored pencil on the edges of. I also used large glue dots to pop the balloon and cloud out to give them more dimension.

Hope you like it. Happy Crafting!

Valentines Day and All Occassion Cards

Around running to the store and appointments I spent my free time today making cards. It amazed me how many decisions I made when creating them and how hard making final decisions can be. "Should I use a bow?" "What color should I make her hat?" "Will it look okay to make my bee pink?" "Oh know! What do I do to cover up my mistake?" It's exercise for the brain so no wonder I feel so mentally exhausted afterward, but it's a good mental exhaustion.

I also took notice of how many times I got my paper-layers stuck together in the wrong position. What a nightmare! I had to pull the heat-tool out to soften the adhesive and even when the papers came apart they curled up from pulling on them. This happened to me three times today, but in the end I didn't have to start from scratch with anything. I made it work. So here are the cards I made today. I'm too tired to include my materials and how I did them. So I'll do it later. Hope you like them.

Happy Crafting!