Although I’m not much a fan of the allergies that accompany the advent of spring, I’m a huge fan of all things becoming new again. I love the early spring flowers — irises, daffodils, and primrose — the budding trees and the first influx of butterflies.

This week, we’re walking through the garden of our crafty collection and working with florals in our stash. Today, I’m combining the Stampin’ Up! Thankful Garden collection with Beautiful Butterflies. And what better way to showcase both than with a fun twist on a two-panel fun fold!

I wanted this design to have a fun twist on the usual layers you might incorporate into a more conventional two-panel fun fold design. And most especially, I wanted to give a more realistic look to a fluttering butterfly.

To accomplish this idea, I incorporated a sheet of acetate as the outer flap. This does two things — first, it allows the florals to remain center stage, and second, it gives the illusion of the butterfly coming in to light on the garden of flowers. Tip: I save the sheets of acetate from new photopolymer stamp sets to use later (act as window sheets).

So we get started with a base of Basic Black cardstock. I really love how this provides a nice but neutral contrast for the focal elements of the design. The focal backdrop on the card front is a sheet of the Lovely Garden designer series paper. I used paper snips to fussy cut two flowers from a separate sheet of the paper to add dimension to the flowers in the garden. One is adhered directly to the front card base on the left side and the other is reserved for the acetate panel. I wrapped some Fresh Freesia velvet ribbon around the bottom of the patterned paper, which acts to hide, if you will, the bottom of the acetate panel when the card is fully closed. I added pink sequins from the sequins trio to several of the floral centers for a bit of interesting dimension to the garden of flowers. The sentiment from the Layers of Beauty set is stamped in black on white cardstock and then diecut with the largest Beautiful Butterflies decorative banner and adhered to the bottom of the panel with dimensionals and finished with a pink Blooming Pearl on either side.

The acetate panel wraps around the front card panel from the inside of the card. The inside message panel and decorative paper cover where the acetate panel is affixed to the card base. A bone folder helps give a deep score line to the acetate so that it folds and lies flat more easily. Using the Beautiful Butterflies dies, I cut the base of the large butterfly from the sheet of aqua-hued Pastel Ombré glimmer paper and then cut the detailed piece from black cardstock to make the butterfly look similar to a Ulysses swallowtail. It’s adhered to the acetate panel with glue dots. The flower cut from the Lovely Garden paper is adhered with glue dots onto the acetate so that it perfectly aligns with the flower on the front card panel underneath. I added pink Blooming Pearls to the flower’s center and then added a few peacock sequins from the sequins trio to either corner of the acetate to tie the full design color palette together.

Today’s card is a part of the Luv 2 Stamp Group Instagram Hop, which goes live at 9 AM Pacific Time (PST).  Click here to head over to my Instagram feed at 9 AM Pacific/11 AM Central and check out what the other demos in our L2S Group have created for you today! 

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