Flying butterfly

The card I'm sharing this morning is very simple on the outside - in fact it is deliberately so simple that the recipient will look at it and think "Oh my goodness what a boring card!"

 

But I'm hoping that will make it even more of a surprise when they open it and see this:

 

 

The outside of the card needs no explanation. The patterned papers I have used, both outside and inside, are from a DCWV 12x12 stack simply called "Stack 9".

For the inside, I took a piece of the green paper cut to 1cm smaller than A4 in each direction, then cut it in half and trimmed about 1mm off the inside edges before covering the inside panels of the A5 white card. The cut up the middle serves two purposes - it helps to keep the crease of the card sharp (it would bulge if the paper continued over the fold) and it also forms a background so that when you view the card from front on, the thread holding the butterfly vanishes and it appears to float in space.

Next I took A4 card, trimmed 2cm off one long edge and folded it into four, concertina style. I then trimmed 1cm off each short edge and used a Martha Stewart punch to make the borders.

I didn't have an archway die (shame! must go shopping.....) but I did have a very old stencil, so I used that to draw and cut the  central arch. Then I covered all the panels with the patterned paper, covering up the arch and re-cutting it afterwards. This gave a neater finish than trying to cut the arch first and then line up the paper.

To stick the pop out into the card, I put adhesive on one side panel, worked out by eye where it would need to sit in the card for the central fold not to stick out when the card was closed, and then stuck it down. Then I folded it closed, applied adhesive to the other panel and closed the main card over it. This way, I knew the panels were lined up exactly opposite each other.

The two butterflies (the side you can't see is pink, like the second one on the outside of the card) were cut with my old favourite Cuttlebug butterfly die, then stuck together with a very fine, strong thread in between. The pink butterfly is actually "back to front" as the die is very slightly asymmetrical, so if you have the side that faced the die, always the better cut side, facing out on both back and front, a little of each one shows on the edges of the other.

The cord is held behind the top of the arch with very strong adhesive tape.

Phew! After all that waffling, on to the challenges:

Clear it Out - Fancy folds/die cuts and punches
Butterfly challenge - A is for archway
Sparkles monthly challenge - More than one fold
Crafty Gals Corner - Lots of Layers