Close to the Heart | By Laurie Schmidlin


Hi there!  It’s Tuesday again, and that means we are sharing something crafty with you!  The craft section in the store is brimming with gorgeous Spring butterflies!

Today I have created a card featuring the butterflies from the Close to the Heart clear stamp set and coordinating Close to the Heart craft dies.

One of my favorite things to do on a card is to create a soft and neutral background and add bright pops of color!

Spring has not yet sprung where I live so I like to bring the Spring inside my craft room!  These butterflies are so wonderfully detailed and are perfect for watercoloring!

I really wanted the only color to be the butterflies, so I kept the sentiment as soft and neutral as the background.  I cut a 1/2″ strip of heavyweight vellum and embossed one of the sentiments from the Close to the Heart stamp set using white detail embossing powder.  Here’s a tip – when embossing on vellum it is especially important to prep your surface before stamping by rubbing the vellum with an anti-static pouch or even a dryer sheet.  This will ensure the embossing powder only sticks to the stamped image.

To create my watercolored butterflies, I started by embossing the three large butterfly images onto watercolor paper using white detail embossing powder.  I then die cut the images out using the coordinating dies.  I added a bit of quick color using Zig Watercolor Brush Markers.

It’s important to leave white space when working with watercolor markers as you want some room to blend the colors.  This particular ink is very reactive to water so it only takes a second to blend them.

Here’s how I created the background.  I die cut the Circa A stackable die out of white cardstock.  I mounted it on a piece of very light gray cardstock.  I then stamped one of the tiny butterfly images  in a handful of circle openings using a light gray ink.  I really like the look of random stamping and the large circles in this die make the perfect frame for small images!

Thanks so much for joining me here today!  Make sure to stop back by every Tuesday to see new crafty creations!

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