Monarch Butterfly Trio

 Hey everyone - I'm popping in with a trio of cards featuring the Hero Arts Color Layering Monarch Butterfly stamp set! Here's card one:

Supplies: Paper - Park Lane A2 card; Poptone black;

Neenah white; scrap of orange; My Mind's Eye Rosy pattern

Stamps - Hero Arts Color Layering Monarch Butterfly (with die)

Dies - A Jillian Vance Design Stitched Dot Rectangle Backdrop Set;

Creative Expressions Mini Expressions Stacked Happy Birthday

Inks - Memento Tuxedo Black; Tim Holtz Mustard Seed Distress Ink;

Hero Arts orange from some MMH kit

When this Hero Arts set came out in 2019, I passed on it since I already had oodles of butterfly stamps. On Friday, though, I found myself wandering around a Hobby Lobby & spotted this set on clearance. Practically free, as I like to say - less than $4!! HL doesn't carry the dies so I figured I'd find them online. Hero Arts was sold out as were other places I normally shop online. Hmmmm - then I remembered a clearance bin of frame cut sets for various brands that my favorite paper warehouse Anchor Paper has. Decided to check there and found the die set, again, practically free - in this case $2. I ended up buying two sets so I could cut multiples. I also bought the sentiment at Anchor Paper - in the regular sale area but at a lovely price. Frantic Stamper carries it too so I linked there.

I didn't like my first attempts at color layering the butterfly. I usually die cut a bunch and use the negative to pop the die cuts into for stamping. For my earliest ones I stamped the outline layer first. For the later ones (I cut a total of 9), I started with the orange layer and found I could line them up better. I used the acetate packaging with the outline to help line up my negative around the orange layer. Worked very well! I stacked the sentiment and put an orange shadow - had a hard time photographing it in focus, oh well - it's ok in real life.

Since this was my first card using of the butterfly set, I'm linking to Darnell's August NBUS Challenge.

Here are two other cards using butterflies from my assembly line stamping:

Additional supplies: Penny Black Eloquence sentiment

Altenew Mix and Match Frames

Additional supplies: Ephemera from Spellbinders May 2022 card kit

Tim Holtz Distress Reinker Villainous Potion

For card three I made a bubble background - my friend Betty shared her card with this technique HERE, linking to a fabulous Christine Stokes video which I enjoyed thoroughly. Just had to give it a go! I tried two different types of card. The largest rectangle was a lightweight cheap white card stock from Michaels. The small rectangle was cut from a superior Hero Arts Handmade Watercolor Paper. Such different effects from the bubbles and both beautiful. The lightweight card warped heavily but I managed to flatten it for the most part...I'd use a heavier weight card next time. You can see to the  right where I die cut the smaller rectangle from the larger watercolor. I found a fun way to get max coverage on my paper and that was to hold it over the water vessel (in my case a plastic drinking cup) and blow bubbles into the cup until they reached the paper. My cup was very full of liquid so it didn't take much blowing with a straw to get a lovely foam. Then I just assessed and moved the paper into more bubbles. Anyway, thanks to Betty for sharing the link - this was fun!!

Thanks for stopping and have a crafty day! Be sure to check back tomorrow as I'll have a last-of-the-month Diva post for you :)