Sparkling Butterflies

I wanted to share a great way to make these new butterflies of Gina's without any coloring. Try embossing onto an iridescent, shimmer or "incandescent" CS like this one, which I got from Paper Temptress. I have it in several colors, but of course the Russo (red) is my favorite. I tipped the paper in this pic so you can see it has this amazing gold cast to it! oooh, ahhhh!!
I embossed the butterfly with my Ranger SuperFine Embossing Powder, the coverage was great, I highly recommend this EP!* Now if you look closely, you'll notice this CS has some texture so it may miss a few tiny parts of your image. What's also cool about this paper, each side has a different texture, one is more "lined", the other more of a cross hatch grid, so choose the side that best fits the look or theme of your card.

Then cut! Use a fine tip pair of scissors like Paper Snips for those antennae! TIP: Embossing this image really helps give those little paper antennae some support and prevents them getting bent or torn. Bend up the wings on either side of the body and your butterfly is ready to adhere to you card. I just love how this sparkles in the light! For the finished card using this butterfly, please see Allison's So Sketchy blog today! I am a "Card Sistah" for her this month and I really enjoyed this sketch, when I was done I loved the Asian feel it had, but part of that was the colors and nature images I chose (paired it with "A Year of Flowers"), and I'm sure she probably have a project from another designer using the same sketch that has a totally different feel...so let's go see! (yup, I just went and checked Jess's sample looks nothing like mine but the sketch LOL!!)

Allison has a design team call right now for some new designers to create with her sketches, both cards AND scrapbook pages.** If you enjoy challenging yourself with sketches, this might be for you, check that out too, deadline for submissions is December 31st, you can get all the details here! (and maybe you and I can both get on the same team, hee hee!!) :)

**True Story (NSR) the overhead light in my stamp area was burned out but I was too busy crafting to change the bulb. I'd dumped all my embossing powder on my image, funneled it back into the jar, but forgot to put the cap back on. I leaned over and blew on the image to make sure every little speck was off my CS; unfortunately it was so dark I didn't see the uncapped container was right under me and a ton of powder went straight up my nose!! a-CHOOOOOOOOOO! (really glad it was "superfine"!) So be sure to always put the cap back on. That's my other TIP. :)

**I am definitely going to use her sketches to get going with my "Hand-in-Hand" set for pages, her layouts are so professional-looking and she puts a lot of work into this "fool-proof" (IMHO) designs I should have no problem coming up with something I'll love, even though I don't consider myself a scrapper!