Tips & Techniques Thursday: Stickled Butterfly

I was so honored for Ashley to invite me to share with you today as a guest blogger.

I'm Tracey Sabella and have been scrapbooking since our church started a monthly scrapbook night back in 2007. The group no longer meets, but I came to realize that scrapbooking is a wonderful creative outlet for me. I live in Ohio with my amazing husband. We'll be celebrating our 31st anniversary later this month. All four of our adult children live nearby, and are the subject of most of my scrapbooking. I design for ScrapThat! Kit club, Really Reasonable Ribbon, Scrapbooking Everyday Miracles, and was selected for the 2013 Donna Salazar Design Team. You can view my work at my blog, Garden of Grace.

I would like to share my Stickled Butterfly Tutorial featured on this birthday card created for a friend who celebrates her birthday on St. Patrick's Day.

"A Friend Knows You"

Stickled Butterfly Tutorial

Often I'm looking for just the right embellishment and don't have the right size, shape or color in my stash. Here is an easy way to add a lovely butterfly to your project with a few items most of us have on hand. 

Supplies: 

Supply List:

~ Sizzix Big Shot or other die cut machine (Not pictured)

~ Scrap of paper 

~ Donna Salazar Wonderful Wings Spellbinder die. You could also use a different die, a punch or electronic cutting machine image.

~ Clear Rock Candy Stickles 

~ 2 pieces of covered wire or flower stamens for antennae 

~ Adhesive backed pearls 

~ Selection of inks in the colors of your choice. For this butterfly, I used Ranger Distress Ink in Scattered Straw, Tea Dye, Rusty Hinge, and Vintage Photo. Not pictured - I also used Black Soot to color the green wire for the antennae

~ Adhesive - I used glossy accents (Not pictured)

Step 1. Cut butterfly from paper scrap.

Step 2. Color butterfly with inks. Start with the lightest color across the entire butterfly and then add the next darker color staying closer to the edge of the wings each time so you get a ombre effect from the body to the tip of the wings.

Scattered Straw

Plus Tea Dye

Plus Rusty Hinge

Plus Vintage Photo

Step 3. Squeeze distress stickles generously on the entire butterfly and spread out with your finger or a paintbrush.

Step 4. Allow to dry. I let mine sit overnight. You can use a heat tool with Distress Stickles since the glitter is glass; however, I find that the medium the glitter is suspended in tends to bubble when heated, and I prefer to air dry for this technique. 

Step 5. Color the wire pieces with ink in the color of your choice. Curl the ends of the wire. I used round nosed pliers, but you could wrap the end of the wire around a toothpick. Glue the wires to the back of your butterfly. I use glossy accents as my adhesive. If you do not have covered wire, you could also use flower stamen. 

Step 6. Place self-adhesive pearls down the center of the body. You can see that I used different size pearls here than for the butterfly in the card, so just use whatever pearls you happen to have in your stash.

Step 7. These butterflies are quite flexible and you can fold up the wings and gently curl them to add graceful dimension as seen in the close-up on my card.

You can change up these sweet sparkly butterflies to coordinate with your project by using different ink colors as well as altering the size or shape of your butterfly. The sky is the limit.

I hope you will try this out. Stop by my blog,

Garden of Grace,

to let me know, and I'll be glad to stop by to see your Stickled Butterfly.