Sheer and Clear

This week’s Paper Smooches SPARKS challenge is a trend watch challenge featuring sheer and clear. It took a little thinking before I came up with this clean and simple design featuring vellum as my sheer element.

I used the dies from the Butterflies 2 set to cut a bunch of butterflies from white cardstock and white vellum. I stamped the cardstock butterflies with the matching solid butterfly images from the Flap Happy set using pink and green inks, then played around with the placement of the butterflies on a piece of light blue cardstock. Once I had an arrangement I liked, I set the matching vellum die cut pieces on top of the stamped cardstock butterflies and used my sewing machine to stitch the butterflies in place. By stitching just at the center of the die cut pieces, I was able to fold up the butterfly wings to give the design dimension and the illusion of movement, too. The set’s “hello” sentiment is stamped in an open spot on the panel in gray ink. I used dimensional dots to adhere the finished panel to a white card base.

In other news, I shared this with my Inking Aloud Facebook friends last night, but wanted to make sure to share it here, too.  6x6 paper pads (except for the newest releases) are marked down to $4 or less and Spectrum Noir marker sets are marked down 25% at i {heart} papers.  You can check out all the sale items here.  And, hurry--once these paper lines are sold out, they won't be restocked!

Materials Used:
from i {heart} papers: Paper Smooches Flap Happy stamp set and Butterflies 2 dies, Tsukineko Memento Angel Pink, Pear Tart, and Gray Flannel inks, Sticky Thumb dimensional dots 

other: Soft Sky and Whisper White cardstock, white vellum (Stampin’ Up!); sewing machine