Butterfly Thank You Card

I am sure some of you were starting to wonder when you'd see another paper project on my blog.  Things have been hectic with travels and family but I did find time to make a card today.  I used Design Studio to help me plan the card - by choosing and sizing the elements on the computer I can experiment without wasting paper.  

 
Here you can see the Design Studio preview of the card.  The only item on the preview that is cut with the Cricut is the sentiment.  The other shapes are simply used to represent the pieces that I will use for the card and to try various color schemes.

The color scheme for the card was determined by the patterned paper from the "Chloe's Closet" collection by Making Memories.  I found some of this paper at Tuesday morning recently.  There were six sheets each of four designs and one shaped and pierced page in the package, a total of 25 pieces for $3.99 and I was helpless to resist!  I don't use a lot of orange but the bright citrus colors appealed to me along with the great price.

Here are all of the pieces of this card.  The card base, cardstock layers, ribbon and butterfly were represented in the Design Studio preview, however, only the sentiment (and the sentiment shadow) were actually cut with the Cricut.

This is an A2 card (8 1/2 x 5 1/2 piece of cardstock folded to form a 5 1/2 x 4 1/4 inch card).  The first layer is cut at 5 1/4 inches x 4 inches.  I tried plain white but it was too stark a contrast with the shiny floral cardstock which has more of an off-white shade around the flowers (you can see the white at the top and the dotted cardstock I chose at the bottom in this photo).  I remembered the DCWV Citrus Stack which has similar bright colors and I found this off-white dotted with orange cardstock in the stack.  The two lines work together nicely.  The floral cardstock is cut at 3 3/4 x 5 inches.

The ribbon is from American Crafts.  I cut a piece to wrap around the floral patterned layer and simply added a bit more adhesive with my ATG to hold the ribbon.

This basic layering is a great start for many cards - all you have to do now is add an embellishment and a sentiment for a quick and easy card.

In my preview, I used only the top layer of the sentiment.  I didn't have the option of adding the patterned paper to preview the effect (one of the things that I really like about the new Craft Room online design tool is the ability to fill images with patterned paper - I just wish we could add papers other than the ones available on the Imagine cartridges).  By looking at the sentiment on the card front it is obvious that I needed to add the shadow layer.

You can see what a difference adding the layer makes - the sentiment is easy to read now.  I used the same DCWV paper that I used for the first layer for the shadow.

 

I added a butterfly instead of a bow on the ribbon.  This butterfly is from the Creative Charms Kit of the Month for April (available for just a few more days).  I used a large dimensional glue dot to hold the bulky butterfly securely.

Here is a closer view of the butterfly - the colors work together perfectly.

The dots in the first layer and the sentiment shadow also coordinate with the dots in the floral patterned paper.  This cardstock is shiny but not glittered.  The card base and the top layer of the sentiment are Bazzill cardstock which also coordinates well with the blue color in the design.

 

I would probably send this card to a crafty friend and hope that the butterfly would be plucked off and reused for another crafty project!

I have explained about the use of color previews before - here is a LINK to a post from last fall.  I'll try to post another explanation of exactly how to plan a card in Design Studio tomorrow.  I have been doing this for years to save paper and help myself make color choices.  This is something you can do with just the trial version of the program if you want to have a better idea of the proper size and placement of your cuts.  I'll be driving back to New Jersey for a quick trip to attend an award ceremony at our son's college - he was chosen to receive the Annual Award for Music and we are very proud of him!  If things get too crazy it may take a day or two to add this post.

link to Discussion Day 2 - How much is enough?

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