A Pot of Butterflies

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

- William Morris

Hello out there!! Tons of things going on here at the mo' - hence the reason I need to catch up with visits today (hopefully?!) Still, spare time was grabbed whilst parked in front of the Paralympics coverage (WOWWEE it's amazing!) to finish the tool pot I mentioned on Wednesday.

I've resisted the temptation to add beads/buttons/bling as it looks very Art Noveau to me in this state (my favourite period) and it allows the flowers and butterflies to do all the talking.

Just to prove it is now in use.

I had two challenges in mind when creating this;

The Stamp Man challenge - Alter It (methinks a change of use for a baked bean tin counts?)

Fashionable Stamping Challenges - Handmade Flowers (there are a few on this!)

The idea was to use the same SB Rose Creations dies to make different flower styles. It works well if you use graduated cardstock colours (darkest in the middle seems to work best). They all had very light spritzes of Cosmic Shimmer mists in different colours to finish. The Lava Red one was definitely the strongest, the Silver added a lovely shine to the purple flowers and the Blue Ice was probably the most delicate on the blue flowers (this is not always the case with this colour, but the petals are quite tight so I suspect there wasn't as much surface area for the mist to land on).

Close up on the butterfly, background and lace border. The butterfly used a mock kraft resist techique with DI Dusty Concord/Fired Brick to colour the non-shiny areas. The background is the corrugated cardboard technique I described in my last post (for the ivy leaves) - this time I used DI Peeled Paint/Stormy Sky on top of the Picket Fence. Underneath the lace - from Trace - (was white! but DI Antique Linen/Walnut Stain changed all that) I have layered a SB Banner Basics 3 border.

That's the last photo - I promise! Think this project lives up to WM's quote and has inspired you to decorate the humblest of items. With that in mind I highly recommend you browse the projects posted recently by Cathryn at Pinxton Craft Club. If you haven't got plans to alter anything that isn't nailed down after seeing these I'd be amazed. Right, time to go visit and attempt to link to the FSC blog, as it isn't playing nice with me - hope it's nothing personal! Huge hugs to you all, and hope you have a great weekend, Buttons x