Butterfly Sparkles

Years ago I came across parchment craft, and I gave it a try but quickly became disillusioned as I always seemed to end up tearing the parchment paper. The tools and pattern books were consigned to a box in the loft.

However having taken up card making in the past 2 years I decided to give it another go so that I could make embossed elements for my cards. Having successfully embossed a dress for a Christening card recently using a grid to get my embossed dots and perforations in a straight line. I decided to attempt something more complex. Having discovered that the Saturday Challenge over at http://thesecretcraftersaturdaychallenge.blogspot.com this week was to use embossing I set to it, after a couple of false starts I finally came up with this card.

I started with a piece of parchment slightly smaller than the A5 base card, and worked the centre pattern just to see if I could do it. Having successfully managed to work the centrepiece using an embossing grid and three different size embossing tools that I have for scoring my card for other projects and a pricking tool, I got more ambitious.

I took the corner and border designs from another grid. Finally I used some off cuts of parchment from previously failed attempts, to trace some butterflies from pictures in a magazine, using a white gel pen and then these were embossed with patterns freehand and I cut them out and stuck them to the embossed panel using gel glue behind the embossed body sections so their wings stood out from the card. I drew the feelers using a white gel pen. Then I trimmed the corners of the panel to fit close to the edge of the corner design.

The panel was then stuck to the card using stick film across the whole of the back of the panel so that it couldn't be seen and I finished it of with flexi border peel offs and little gems from my stash before adding a greeting to the bottom.

Whilst I can see the imperfections in the design close up I am pretty pleased that I have finally managed to produce a card using this technique. I love to see the white parchment work and have always held crafters who produce these beautifully intricate designs in high regard.

 Making this has whetted my appetite to give the  parchment another go and I came home from work today with the latest edition of 'Parchment Craft' magazine and issued instructions to my husband to go and search the loft for my specialist tools which are still up there somewhere.  It'll also give me chance to practice my photography skills as having never photographed a parchment card before and I can see lots of room for improvement when I look at the attached photographs. But I've said it before on my blog I do like a challenge.