City Crafter Guest Designer - Butterfly

Hello Everyone!

I am very honoured to be here today as the Guest Designer at City Crafter for their latest challenge "BUTTERFLY". I send a thank you out to Kirsty and the entire team for inviting me to spend the day with them. Such a talented group of ladies, I do hope you will hop on over and see what the other team members have created.

City Crafter always has a beautiful photo for you to pull inspiration from, and this is the photo for their "BUTTERFLY" challenge. I decided to concentrate on the piece of wood with the black butterflies, the postage stamp, the book pages and the paper underneath with the pink flowers.

This card is my way of sending out a huge thank you to two very wonderful, kind, talented ladies who sent me such lovely happy mail this year. Thank you to CHRIS of pearshapedcrafting and SAMRA of Paper Talk with Samra. Many of the products I have used on my card today were pressies from these sweet friends! Please do drop by and visit these gals, you won't regret it!

For the wood planks I used DecoArt Americana paints Dark Chocolate and Pebbles as well as some Weathered Wood Medium, some Archival ink Potting Soil, Distress ink spray Walnut Stain and Picket Fence. The little butterfly is from the new stamp set that Chris sent me.

The book page panel was also supplied by Chris (she used some pages as padding in the package). I used a spritz resist and then some distress ink Ground Espresso to get the splotchy pattern.

The flowers are punched using Sizzix Spiky Floral and coloured with Soft Blossom from Hero Arts. The leaves are from a Prima stamp set that Samra sent me. The postcard stamp is from Urban stamps, the small postage stamp is from Stampology and the large butterfly is from a discount bin at Michaels. The frame is from the new stamp set that Chris sent me, I just fussy cut it out. The sentiment is from Heartfelt Creations.

UPDATE:

My card won awards from the following wonderful challenges:

- Get Creative Challenges - #30- Something New!

 - Really Reasonable Ribbon Blog - #132 - 'Looky What I Got'

- Southern Girls - One For The Girls

 - Ruby's Rainbow - Ch#120  Show Us Something New 

    

  

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So I think it's time that I introduce you to some of my extended family. These little creatures have become a part of my daily routine with feedings twice day (except when it's too cold for the poor little buggers).

First up we have the girls. Brenda, Karen and Shirley. Brenda is the biggest of the girls and she's the feistiest one as well. She has a little scar on her hind leg that tells me she can hold her own in a fight! Shirley is smallest and very shy, she rarely comes down from the roof, so I toss peanuts up there for her to grab. Karen is the friendliest. She comes right onto the balcony and as of yesterday, will even eat out of my hand!!

You can see here that I have tied a branch of the tree to my balcony railing and attached a strip of carpet to the bars...I decided to do this after one of the boys took a swan dive because he couldn't figure out how to get off the balcony! Poor little fellow, don't worry, he landed in a bush and ran away unscathed. Here is Karen, perched up on the railing eating a peanut.

SIDE BAR -  So hubby has hooked me up with a zoom lens, and I was practising the other day trying to hold it. Why practice you ask...well because the darned thing's almost as big as my head and I have to steady it with just one hand so I can still use the focus and push the shutter with the other hand! It's a bit like entering an ice-cream eating contest when you're lactose intolerant...nothing but moaning and groaning!

Anyway, here is my first semi-successful shot, I took this from inside the house! Be prepared for some serious close-ups in the near future! HAHA!

That's it for today. Thank you for stopping in and for all the amazing comments. I read and appreciate every single one! If you have any questions, please let me know.