New! Butterflies Butterflies Butterflies (or Eclectica ESN62) from PaperArtsy!

Hi friends! Today I’m happy to announce the release of my latest batch of stamps and stencils from PaperArtsy!

I want to focus on the first of the collection for this month: Eclectica ESN62, or Butterflies Butterflies Butterflies—

(Stamps are now available from PaperArtsy stockists. Please look at the PaperArtsy website for a complete listing. )

With this set, I wanted to create images that would work well for coloring techniques—whether you paint in the butterflies as I did here (embossing the images first) or using colored pencils, watercolors or brush markers.

This large butterfly collage is designed to be a card focal, but can also be cut apart so you can work with just the butterfly, or use the words together, or the words separately.

Here’s a close-up of the painted butterfly. The background paper (where you see the pink and green splots) is made with my Gel Printing Plate and the monoprinting process.

Gel printed papers can be bold and colorful—and second-generation prints are perfect for adding just a bit of color (and maybe some surprises) to your paper, while leaving enough white space so text can show up really effectively. To make a second-generation print, simply monoprint a piece of paper as usual, then immediately pull a second print without re-painting the gel plate.

I like to use PaperArtsy’s Drying Retarder with their Fresco Finish paints, since it extends the open working time of the paint and makes it easier to pull those second-generation prints.

Here’s another project—for this one, I’ve stamped the two smaller butterfly collages and cut out the butterflies to be separate elements. This makes an easy dimensional aspect to your card.

You can see these two butterflies at the bottom of the stamp set. I love having the option to use the full collage or to get out my tiny scissors and trim away the collage. If you want something in-between, you can also stamp the collage images as is, then use a square, oval or circle die to cut around the shape.

The background is another monoprinted piece, with a sentiment from the set stamped on top.

The stenciling you see in the middle is from a *new!* stencil, PS364. I used Grunge Paste through the stencil, then added a bit of light pink paint on top, working through the stencil.

The butterflies are pretty easy to cut apart, and look great when popped up with foam tape.

A favorite quote from Emily Dickinson, and one I think will be perfect for art journals, tags and cards!

If you want to see the complete blog post I wrote for PaperArtsy, you can pop on over to their website. This week is packed with releases from several other designers too, so I hope you can take a few minutes to grab a coffee or tea and take some time during this busy season to inspire your creativity.

Enjoy!