Butterfly Collage

I think it's time to think spring.  Those ten inches of snow we got on Tuesday will be the last of this season.  Yeah, that's probably not true but it's nice thought anyways.  Last weekend I made a project that totally got me thinking summer.  {Forget spring, I went right to summer.}

When you think of butterflies, do you think of flowers?  I do.

One of my favorite spots to enjoy the beauty of flowers is my mom's gardens.  Every spring and summer I spend hours there taking photographs.

Her flower gardens have been the inspiration for a few of my projects - Flower Photo Block Quilt and Earth Laughs in Flowers Tray.  And now they are the inspiration for my butterfly collage.

I know I'm a Johnny - come - lately to the butterfly collage scene but this idea has been in my head for about a year.  But I think my butterflies are unique.  In fact, they are one of a kind.  Why?  Because they are made from my original photographs of flowers in my mom's garden.

After selecting the photos that I wanted to use {not an easy task as I had hundreds to chose from} I simply printed them from my home computer on presentation paper.  Since an actual butterfly has colors on both sides of their wings, I flipped the images and printed on the back side of the paper.  {Of couse, no one will see this detail - it's just for me.}

Then using a butterfly paper punch, I punched out 42 butterflies.  {Actually, more than 42.  I just couldn't decide which I liked and narrowed it down later.}  I scored each butterfly along the body and slightly folded the wings up to give each one some dimension.

Then I glued them to a piece of heavyweight drawing paper and put the collage into a shadowbox frame.  {I got the frame at Jo-Ann's - 40% off sale + 20% off coupon}

 I absolutely love how this came out.  The hardest part was deciding on the 42 butterflies.  Like I said, I had many choices - enough that I could make another.

Here are close-ups of the butterflies:

Do you have a favorite of the flower butterflies?  I think the pink lupine is my favorite, which is why I put it in the middle.  But I love them all.  

Now if spring would hurry up and get here...

I am sharing at my favorite parties.