Flourishing Butterflies by Alison

Hello everyone, Alison here from Words and Pictures, and I've brought along some Flourishing Butterflies to share with you today.

What I mean by that is that I've been playing with the fabulous Mini Butterflies again, as well as some of the scrumptious Mini Cogs, and they're all nestled around one of the glorious ornate Flourishes now available to create an altered notebook cover which, I will confess, I'm rather in love with!

First I planned the layout roughly.  You'll notice I didn't end up with quite this many butterflies!

I had a lovely time creating the background - book pages, tissue tapes and various layers of gesso and crackle mediums are at the heart of it.

I applied texture sand paste and gesso to the large flourish (this is Curled Vine Fancy Flourish Style 2, but there are so many lovely ones to choose from) before gluing it in place.  I added the metal flowers and filigree pieces, and gesso'd all of it.

I decided I needed a bit of extra crackle texture, so I applied that and let it dry before going on to the next stage.

Ah yes, the next stage - lots of spritzing inky colour over and around it all - such fun.

As well as spraying on inky colour, I also used a paintbrush to apply paint (shockingly conventional, I know) to intensify the colour in places.

That also gave me a bit more control in deciding where and how much colour I was applying to the flourish, the flowers or the crackled "sky".

Both the butterflies and the cogs have been given a touch of golden shimmer using some iridescent gold paint - Interference Gold, which changes as it catches the light.

I've used some of the same stuff to add highlights and gilding on the flourish texture and the metal elements too.

The butterflies gleam as they catch the light (these are mostly from the Mini Butterflies Style 4 sheet) ...

... and the cogs add a little hint of Steampunk glamour...

(... or should that be Glampunk? - something I explored with one of my first ever posts for Calico way back when!!)

These are from the Cogs Style 1 sheet, and I love how they glow amongst the other elements.

I quite often leave my Calico Craft Parts "naked" as I find them so beautiful, but as you've seen in my last couple of projects, they're also fabulous when altered and so much fun to play with!

So there's my notebook cover for you - I hope you like it.  If you're tempted to go shopping, you can click on any of the links in the text to go straight to the relevant Craft Parts.  See you again soon.

Alison xx