Tutorial: Steampunk Butterflies by Connie Holso

I have been playing with art lately.  I just finished up some ATCs for a Butterfly Swap on our Paper Traders Yahoo Group and I am quite pleased with them.  I thought I would share how I did them in case some of you have not played with foil duct tape yet.  I love this stuff!  Get it in the hardware store.

These cards were a take off of a tag tutorial Tim Holtz posted a while back.  I love all his great ideas...especially anything grunge!

Click image for larger view

What I did:  First I covered my precut ATCs with cut strips of the aluminum tape. (It wasn't wide enough to cover the whole card so I cut strips to make a patchwork look and placed them at various angles. Next I ran them through my Cuttlebug with Tim Holtz's Steampunk Gears embossing folder.  I used a large needle and an embossing stylus to pierce little stitch holes and marks along the "seamlines" of the foil.

Once I had it like I wanted I covered the background with slate alcohol ink, which I then rubbed off with a rag with a bit of alcohol on it so it would leave the ink in the low places.  Glue another ATC blank to the back to give stability -- backgrounds done! Set aside.

For the butterflies I covered some cardstock as I did for the backgrounds but I embossed with Tim Holtz's Patchwork embossing folder,  I covered with slate alcohol ink but rubbed off most of it.  Then I covered it with orange and rust alcohol inks and blended them around to give an aged look.  When doing this you have to be careful not to work it too much or you will dissolve the dark ink from the low places,  You want it in those cracks for depth.  Once I was happy with my foil I hand cut my butterflies,  (I didn't have a die the right size for ATCs.)  I used my stylus to create a "body" for the butterflies, curled the wings up and over to simulate flight and added black foam dots to the back of the lifted part of the wings.

To assemble I added a strip of tissue tape along one side of my background,  then I mounted the butterflies using the foam dots and a flat glue dot at the body to keep the contour.  I used a book arrow for the "fly" tag.  Using metal dies I added the letters to the arrows, then rubbed with the slate alcohol ink, sanded it off so it was only in the letters, and added them to my cards using a small glue dot to keep them from sliding around - or off.  :-)  Ta Da! They are done!

by Connie Holso
http://stampgram.blogspot.com/