Ahead of Schedule

I'm one of those people who always underestimates the amount of time it will take me to complete a craft project so I tend to put it off until the last moment. This invariably leads to either a) a sleepless night trying to complete something that should have been started days earlier, or b) an unstarted/unfinished/ unsatisfactory project that won't be ready in time. That's happened more often than I want to admit.

This year I took the bulls by the horns and actually sat down to make a Mother's Day card a week ahead of need. In order to make the process go a little faster, almost all the elements I used, with the exception of the green leaves, were things I already had on hand.

Materials:

• Card base -- DCWV Mariposa Box of Cards collection
• Flowers -- Petaloo
• Black swirl rubber stamp -- Hero Arts Florentine Scroll Background 
• Sentiment Stamp -- Impress Rubber Stamps
• Ink -- Tsukineko Versafine Onyx Black (sentiment and scroll),  Versamark Watermark Ink (scroll), Ranger Distress Ink (shading around oval and leaves)
• Three-part butterfly (solid contour, black veining and body) -- Memory Box dies

Notes:

• The solid blue butterfly contour was colored using pigment inks and gel pens before the black veined wing details were attached. The body was encrusted with self-adhesive rhinestones. 
• I designed the leaves in a drawing program and cut them with the eCraft electronic cutter. 
• Florentine Scroll stamp was inked first with watermark ink then with onyx black ink. Image was then embossed with black ultrafine embossing powder. Because of the "dimples" in the card's texture, the impression looks somewhat distressed and antiqued.

It just so happens that one of the Yahoo groups I belong to is sponsoring a giveaway drawing to celebrate National Scrapbooking Day. The requirement for entries is that it must contain one or more elements created on an electronic cutter using MTC software. Well, the leaves on this card were created in precisely that manner so I entered my card into the drawing. Hey, who knows? 

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva