Paper Piercing Butterflies And A Couple Of Questions

I am so excited that I was able to do something in the craft room this week. Using the big shot kind of gave me some stomach cramping, but nothing that would keep me from playing!

I received this template in about 3 weeks ago from Ecstasy Crafts. It is weird that it has no name, only being listed as "exclusive small template". It comes with a piercing/embossing mat that is the perfect size for the template, which is nice especially for the low price.

Anyway...After embossing it the first time, I tried to color it with my copics. WOW...what a mess it was. The colors bled so bad, which surprised me. I really thought that copics dried fast on anything.

For the corners I used part of a flower flourish that is on the template. Really wish I could have colored them, but with the embossing you can still tell they are flowers, lol. HMMMMMM..I am wondering now if color pencils would have worked. Funny I don't think of these things until talking (typing, lol) about it.

I was able to use spray adhesive on the butterfly die cut to adhere it to the vellum, but it did not work to adhere the vellum to the shimmery base paper. I ended up using my ATG which, surprisingly, did not show through. Good to know!

The edge embossing is also made up of 2 flourishes on the template plus a tiny flower centered on each edge.

This flourish was cut out from the same homemade paper as the butterfly die cut. I have had this paper for years and finally found something to use it on. I pull it out all the time and it never seemed to go with anything I was doing. Coloring it with a copic made it a bit darker than I expected, so I covered it with some stickles.

It always amazes me that the camera picks up details that the eye does not see. In real life the flourish looks completely and evenly covered, but in the photo it looks the opposite. I wonder if I should not have gotten such a good camera, lol

Here is a "bow" I made...ha ha ha...doesn't look like a bow because of the type of ribbon. It is a 3 loop "bow". It looks to me that if I made it a 4 loop "bow", it would have looked like a flower. I'll have to try that next time.

This is all those things put together to made the front of the card, lol

The butterfly embossed paper I used under the vellum only comes in white. I used my brilliance blue ink pad to color it. I have no idea how others get the embossing to stay white when doing this. I just could not get the butterflies to stay white no matter how much pressure I put on the ink pad. Do any of you know the trick to this? Though it doesn't look bad this way, I think that if the ink did not get into the embossing, the white butterflies would have really looked pretty.

I have never used the smaller dies from this set, though I have used the large one quite a few times. Figured I should finally give them a chance. This tiny embossed butterfly, which does have some piercing around it, is also on the template.

Here is the inside. I only used the tiny, tiny pearls here, as opposed to a larger size in the butterflies on the front. I figured that would make it easier to write the note. I really like how the flourishes looks here. When I was finished the inside, I thought "wow, I think I like this better than the outside" tee he he
Thank you all for sticking with me though I have not been able to post often. I am not as tired as I have been, so am looking forward to checking out your blogs and leaving comments this coming week.

I also have my Egg Transformer blog finished as well as the Etsy store. All I need to do is take photos and plug them in. I have been told by a few people that I should also sell some of my eggs in the Etsy store. What do you think?

I have another question for you all. I have noticed that several blogs just list the items used at the end of their post rather than talking about them in the post. I suppose that would make the post shorter, which is most likely better to read, but I am not sure. Do you prefer the items listed at the end?
{{{HUGS}}}