Mid Week Midnight Madness "Jessica's Vintage Butterfly Tutorial"

Thank you for stopping in today for our Mid Week Fun. Today you are being treated to a tutorial from our very talented team member Jessica.

If you are looking for our current

Midnight Madness Sketch Challenge, then just click HERE

Today I will be showing you how to make this butterfly. I have been making these butterflys for some time now..I use them on cards, as magnets, in scrapbooks and as brooches! I know I took a lot of photos, but I didn't want to miss any steps.

first we have supplies:
e-600 glue: I have tried many many many glues and this glue proves the best for
the clear cabs, less bubbles and a stronger clear hold. The e600 glue I purchase at Michaels craft stores, I notice that they do not sell it at Joannes though. It can also be bought online.
30x40 clear acrylic cabochon: I buy mine from allstarco They have the best prices and have all sizes available. If you do not want to buy the Clear Cabochons in bulk like I do you can buy little sets on etsy.com, just do a search under the supplies section for 'clear cabochon' or 'acrylic cabochon' the measurements 30x40 are in mm. Some sellers even combine 'try out' sets that include the e-600 glue and little cabs. I also like the 12x13mm cabs for small stuff on cards.
Scor pal double stick tape (or glue stick but I like the tape, less messy)
Printed out butterfly: I find lots of my stock images from the deviant art stock images...make sure that you read the terms of use for the image you choose as each person has different rules regarding the use of their stock images, some can not be used for commercial use so if you are planning on selling the butterfly in any way make sure to only use ones that allow commercial use!
Printed out vintage beauties: You can either do a search for Ephemera lady or vintage beauty, mostly anything taken before 1930 is in the public domain these days so its all up for grabs. Some people claim to 'copyright' these images on their site, but they cant because the images are public domain. They may however copyright the sheets that they made of a variety of ladies, but the actual images belong to no one.
Pretty cardstock black puff paint (optional): I printed my butterfly too big, but I hate to waste so I will be using the black puff paint to redefine the edges of the wings.
scissors
(duh)

first we take our printed out butterfly, its doesnt matter if you print it on glossy or matte since we will glitter it.Today I used matte paper. sometimes I do glitter lines if I want to be more subtle...not today...I want ALL GLITTER!

I smear it around with my fingers and then puff paint where I want my new edges to be, dont worry if your lines are not perfect, we can trim them with our scissors when they dry.

ta-da! Allow to dry at least an hour or more (I usually do 3 hours because I curse myself when I think its dry and I go to pick it up and get black puff paint or glitter all over my thumb!)

now to do the cab...I have a bunch of pre printed sheets of ladies in all different sizes...

the best way to find the right one is to slide the cab over the different girls to see which one looks best magnified.

too light for this dark butterfly...but once you do pick one its time to glue. For some reason I can never seem to close my glue properly and I always have a hard time getting the lid to un-stick.

I would like to apologize to my dentist for how I get my glue open.

finally!

I chose a darker image because the blue butterfly is dark...just glob a big dot right on top! I need to note here that you MUST use matte paper for your lady, not gloss. The gloss paper when it dries bubbles...it took me a long time to figure this one out. You get less little bubbles under your cab when it dries if you use matte paper.

Just squish it right on top of the glue...i really like this part....till its flat. Don't worry about glue overspill...we can trim it later.

This glue needs to cure a little over 24 hours....if you try to cut into it early you will get glue all over your scissors and be very sad (trust me)

time to finish up now that everything is dry.

take your double stick tape from scor-pal and put it on the back of the butterfly, then stick your pretty cardstock on the back. This makes for a nice backing and keeps the butterfly thick.

you can now trim away the excess puff paint and you have a beautiful butterfly....

here is the back with the card stock.

now you can just cut around your dry cab trimming away all the excess glue.

so prettty!

a side note here is, that these also look great in vintage blank cameo settings for jewelry!

Glue your lady down and here is your completed butterfly!

you can add a magnet or pinback to the back of the butterfly or leave the back plain to use on a card! Click HERE to see it used as a pin on a card. To see it used directly on a card you can click HERE.

all done! Hope you enjoyed! Thank you Jessica for your fabulous tutorial! Please be sure to leave a comment with your thoughts and if you do give this a try, PLEASE come back and leave us a link so we can come check it out :) Thank you for stopping by and we hope you find the time to play our sketch this week.