Butterfly 'Exhibit' & a Challenge

A few weeks ago I mentioned I'd been working on a new project.  A butterfly 'exhibit'.  I started it 3 weeks ago and then the flu hit, so it took a bit longer to finish. 

You know when you go to the zoo or the museum and you see the butterflies all grouped together on a board?  As Sarah started designing these butterfly raw chipboard shapes for our CHA Winter release, I knew that's what I wanted to do!

So I grabbed a few packages and made this - my own version of a butterfly exhibit.  It fits into a 12x12  shadowbox/scrapbook frame.

I used a bunch of different techniques and product on the butterflies.  I started by painting all of them with a base coat of cream acrylic paint.

Altering these raw chipboard shapes is really easy to do and fun.  If you want to play along, this month's Product Challenge on our website is using our raw chipboard shapes. 

Below you'll find a close up of each of the butterflies I made.  You should be able to click on each image for a larger view. 

If you're playing along in our monthly product challenge, remember we have 12 different raw chipboard shapes to play with.  Feel free to use one of these techniques or come up with something of your own.  We'd love to see what you come up with! 

I used a Heidi Swapp Mini Butterfly mask and gold spray paint on this one.  After the paint was dry I removed the mask, colored 2 of the wings black and then outlined with Ranger Gold Ice Ice Stickles.

Vintage buttons on this one, super easy.

I used a bunch of different words from Making Memories Word Fetti stickers on this one.

I used a hole punch to punch black circles and then added a drop of Ranger White Opal Liquid Pearls to each circle.

Another quick one - a swirl stamp and StazOn Black ink for a crisp image.

Sanded the edges of this one after painting, outlined with a black pen and then applied a thick coat of Ranger Glossy Accents to the top.  When it dries it looks like an epoxy sticker - very cool medium if you haven't played with it before!

Covered with paper & sanded the edges.

Covered this one with Vintage Shards Glass Glitter, a little of this goes a long way.  A really neat look in person - if you use this be careful because it's real glass.

Rhinestones with a bit of Liquid Pearl mixed in.

Rub-ons, Ice Stickles, outlined with a black pen.

Vintage bingo card.

Our Travel Mini Words rub-ons. These went on so easy, I just put the sheet over the butterfly and rubbed.

I started by covering this with strips of Tacky Tape and then poured microbeads over the top.  The Tacky Tape works great for adhering little bits of things!

Stamped and inked the edges.

Covered with Ranger Crackle Medium, let dry and then painted with black acrylic paint.

The frame that I bought for this has a felt backing.  I used small pieces of velcro on each wing to adhere it to the backing.  It's now hanging on the wall in my scrapbook room.  It was a fun, easy project that I was able to do over a couple of days.  The nice thing about it is that it was something that I could work on even if I only had 15 minutes or so.  Those are my kind of projects!