Hip to be Square (Hels' Challenge)

Hi all

Hels set a great challenge this week with Hip to be Square.  This gave me lots of possibilities, and here is my entry - Butterflies are Self Propelled Flowers.

The base is a Large Label Shape from Stamps Away, which I have had sitting in the cupboard for a little while.  It was smooshed with some acrylic paints, and edged with a distress stain dabber.

I cut the five squares with a Spellbinders die, and painted them up, two with acrylic, and three with distress stains.  These latter were given a quick coat of gesso to give them some tooth.  All were edged with a tarnished brass distress stain dabber.




I used the lovely squares Finnabair stencil from Prima with two colours of distress ink on two of the squares.

Then I set to with stamps!  The inchies (butterflies and flowers) are from Inkadinkado.  The sentiment is from Sheena Douglass and the multicoloured butterfly is from Stampin' Up. This is a MASSIVE butterfly in real life, but when stamped onto shrink plastic and shrunk, it fit brilliantly with the scale of the piece.  It's coloured with watercolour pencils.  It never ceases to amaze me how intense the colours go on shrink plastic - they were really quite wussy before I got the heat tool on it!

The other two butterflies have been die cut using Tim's Movers and Shapers dies, stamped on white Clearly for Art with a Studio 490 stamp.  Then heated and bent.










The flowers were die cut with a Sizzix die, from a Websters' Pages pad I had, and made 3d using Hels' great tutorial, and dipped into UTEE.  Thanks, Hels, for inspiring me to get the MeltPot out!  Just a little bit of copper glitter for some bling.

Assembled using Cosmic Shimmers glue and some silcon for height for the central plaque, and some more bling in the shape of those square copper rhinestones.

  Enjoy!

Materials used

Substrate:  Stamps Away

Inks and Paints
Acrylic paint: Daler Rowney - Sap Green, Metallic green, Naples yellow, Zinc mixing white
Distress stain - Peacock feathers, Chipped sapphire, Spiced marmalade, Bundled sage, Tarnished brass
Distress ink - Chipped sapphire, Wild honey
Archival ink - Monarch orange, Venetian orange, Cobalt, French ultramarine

Stamps
Studio 490 - LCS051 Art Gone Postal
Inkadinkado - 60-30159, 60-30165
Stampin' Up - Swallowtail
Sheena - SD-LBS-CLRS Flying Colours

Dies
Sizzix - butterflies 657209, flower layers no 5 656079
Spellbinders - Classic squares large S4 126

Other stuff
Cosmic Shimmer: UTEE clear and dries clear glue
Prima Stencil, Sunrise Sunset squares
Websters Pages paper (for porcelain flowers)
Studio 490 Clearly for Art
Shrink Plastic
Derwent metallic watercolour pencils
Diamond sparkles - Copper penny glitter
Papermania - Mosaics tiger eye