Inspiration Avenue: The Butterfly

Hettiene asked us to honor butterflies this week at Inspiration Avenue. She showed us many fine examples of butterflies, everything from butterflies made from food to butterflies drawn on canvas. They were all very inspirational.

On Monday I started out by prepping one of my wooden blocks. I had planned to paint it, then place various butterfly images on tags, then glue the tags to the block. However, on Tuesday I learned I could no longer access any of my external drives, so taking photos of the block would have been impossible to show, and the block was too large for my scanner.

So off to "Plan B," which turned out to be "Plan Butterfly."



In keeping with my desire to use materials and tools I already have, I dyed some of my (now quite familiar) background fabric, as well as a dried up wet wipe, and a piece of cheesecloth. However, when I tried to iron the wet wipe, it disintegrated and I had to use only the portion of the wipe that didn't get demolished by the iron.

Lesson to be learned: Wet wipes, even with the iron temp set on the lowest setting, will melt.

Does the background fabric look familiar? It should. Here and the last photo of this post I show this same background fabric dyed in blue, and here in pink. This time I used butterscotch and lettuce color mists, along with a white shimmering mist, which doesn't show in the scan, but is gorgeous when the light shines just right.

EDIT: In comments, Terrie asked about the butterfly and if it was a transfer. I left a message for her on her blog (because as I've said in the past, I never expect people to return to my blog to read about comments I write to them), but thought I should probably add it here, too. This is an image I printed from somewhere (possibly/probably Art e-zine UK) years ago on some transparent paper. For this project, I cut around the butterfly and used gel medium to add it to the wet wipe. Thanks for asking Terrie.

Thanks for the challenge, Hettiene. To see what others have created, head to Inspiration Avenue Sunday afternoon and view all the awesome entries.