Illuminated Butterfly Tangle Card

Hi All –

Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend. After our blizzard here in Colorado last week that dumped 30 inches of snow at our house, Easter Sunday was a beautiful day. The weather in Colorado likes to tease us this time of year. On one day it can be sunny and 70 degrees and the next it’s snowing. I’m ready for some consistent weather patterns.

This week I created an extra little project with my Dare 2B Artzy stamps. I challenged myself (and my brain) to create something new and different and I had fun doing that with the Dare 2B Artzy Butterfly Tangle stamp set and matching dies.

When I see tangle designs, I think of stained glass and that gave me the idea for this card as it has an element that’s sort of like stained glass.

First I created an Easel Fold card which was something I’d never done before. To do that, I cut down a piece of cardstock from the Dare 2B Artzy Doodles Variety pack into a piece that was 4 ¼ by 8 1/2. Next I scored that at 4 ¼ and 6 3/8. Next, I used the die from the Butterfly Tangle set and die cut the bottom section of the card front. Once I was done I set that aside.

I stamped one of the butterfly tangles onto a piece of vellum with some Versamark ink and heat embossed it with some black embossing powder.

Next, I colored the back side of the embossed butterfly with my Tombow brush tip markers. The Tombow markers seemed to have the most vibrant color on vellum of all my markers and actually went on with fewer streaks than Copics, Sharpies or Marvy markers. Periodically throughout my coloring I would turn the image over and check it against my light to see if any areas were missed. Once finished, I did go back and touch up a few areas with a black Copic marker where the embossing powder missed. Once finished I trimmed the vellum down to a square leaving a bit of an edge around it to adhere it to the bottom of the card past the last score line where the card would fold so that it would line up with the butterfly that I cut out of my card base.

I cut a piece of 110 lb white cardstock to fit the front of my card leaving a 1/8” all the way around the card. Next came the tricky part, I used the Butterfly Tangle die set again and die cut my card front so that it would like up with my vellum colored butterfly.  After the butterfly was die cut I took the cardstock and adhered it the bottom part of the card base. This creates the easel as only the bottom part of the base folds while the top of the card stands up.

I stamped all the parts of the fun tangle flower from the Butterfly Tangle set separately with Versamark and heat embossed them with the black embossing powder. I colored them with Tombow markers and then fussy cut each part of the flower out and placed in on my card front with some dimensional foam on the flower and leaf.

For the inside of my card, I die cut 3 different scalloped squares of cardstock and layered them, with the second layer having a foam base to it to create something for the easel part of the card to prop up against.

I used the Thinking of You Makes Me Smile sentiment from the Butterfly Tangle stamp and embossed it with some orange embossing powder.

Next I used a little wooden Hello that I had and painted it a bright orange and added some small dimensional foam and glued it to the front of my card. I added a few dimensional glittery dots to the front of my card as well.

The coolest thing about this card is the stained glass element that I’d mentioned. Because it is an easel card, you can slip a battery operated tea light candle in behind the vellum colored butterfly and it creates a beautiful flickering stained glass effect.

Hope you enjoyed this card. If you like to color tangle designs be sure to take some time to check out the Dare 2B Artzy store. In addition to this Tangle Butterfly set there are many other tangle stamps to choose from so you could make your own stained glass cards for most any occasion you could think of.  I hope my card gives you lots of ideas for fun projects to make.

Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty day!

Tonya