Butterfly Mania!

I went a little crazy with the images from the Dragonflies full sheet from Biblical Impressions!  This first card has the large butterfly.  I embossed with Purple Pastel gold leaf, then painted in with H2Os.  The cardstock I used has a slightly bumpy texture, which in turn gives the gold leaf a bumpier appearance.  I like the effect!

For the shadow butterfly, I used irridescent mica powders.  I used a paintbrush to apply the color in splashes, then when fiinished, gently used the brush back and forth over the whole panel to get every area coated.  If you look closely at the edges, you will see a slightly smudged look: I handled this too soon after embossing.  Unlike gold leaf and embossing powders, mica powders need to be left for awhile to "set" before cutting.  I hadn't used these in a long time and had forgotten.

Here is a picture that includes all four of the butterfly images ... do I have an obsession with embossing??? ;-) I think Biblical has a stamp that says something like, "so many stamps, so little time;" I think I would reword that to "so many techniques, so little time!" at least for these stamp images!   Note that the shadow butterfly shown  here is a more accurate rendering than the photo above.  By the way, if you look at the medium butteflies, embossed on dark green, blue, and red marbled cardstock in the upper right corner, there are a few spots of chipped gold embossing.  This is because I did not trim them right after embossing.  On glossy cardstock, both gold leaf and embossing powders get dryer as time passes, and so will flake off when cut.  However, shortly after embossing, there is still enough moisture to keep this from happening.