Blissful!

The smARTworks design team is sent a "challenge" set every other month. It's always fun to open that envelope - sometimes I have ideas forming immediately, and sometimes the sets are truly, well, challenging as I'm forced to use something I wouldn't normally be drawn to. This time around, I was thrilled the Bliss set, which includes this large butterfly and a simple phrase. I had a number of ideas, but chose to do some paper piecing. For starters, I knew I wanted to use more than one b-fly, so decided to make a 5x7 card to give myself more working room. I started by stamping the b-fly onto white cardstock 3 times - my placement was now set, and I didn't have to worry about trimming the antennae (a tip I picked up from Dina at some point). I then stamped it onto three different papers from Memory Box - I chose subtle prints as I didn't want to detract from the detailed veining of the image itself. I cut the butterflies out; I knew which print I wanted where, so I didn't have to cut out the entire image, but I did make sure to trim a bit extra for the edges. I matted the white panel with black, then adhered the butterflies and trimmed them flush with the black layer. After mounting it on the card base, I then added the sentiment, which was stamped onto a 4th coordinating paper. I trimmed it into a banner type shape, and mounted it with a few "waves" for added dimension. Blissful! :)

Susan is offering up one of these sets - head over for your chance to win! And you can see what each of the other cookies made with this set here.