Thursday, February 5, 2009

A Butterfly Birthday

When you walk into the Hilo Ben Franklin Crafts store you know it's spring because there are butterflies everywhere. The sparkling, sequined butterflies are in the form of picks, sprays, and other decorative items. I decided that they would make the perfect package topper for the birthday gift I was sending to my sister. (See photo.) The wrapping paper is the one of the inexpensive single sheets from Japan and the ribbon came from a huge roll of Heiko ribbon. The wrapping paper and ribbon are good buys for the budget-minded shopper.

Because I was butterfly happy, I decided to look for a rubber stamp to make a birthday card to match the gift wrap. I found the perfect background stamp from Hero Arts (Butterflies and Flowers). Although you might not be able to see from the photo, I stamped and embossed the design on a printed sheet from the K. and Co. 'Mira' Specialty Paper stack. This pack of paper includes some glittered and foiled paper but the one that I liked was plain so I embossed it with glitter gold embossing powder. I really like the subtle way that the embossed floral stamp design glitters on the floral print of the paper.

The dimensional butterfly used on the card is a sticker from K. and Co. After I applied it to the card, I noticed that somehow a decorative bead on the wing had fallen off. I decided to remove the bead on the other wing because I didn't have a matching one. Unfortunately, some of the paper wing ripped off when I took off the bead. Aargh! In desperation I colored in the wing with a color pencil and glued on more beads to cover the flaw. Sometimes mistakes yield a better outcome. Another happy mistake happened when I used a non-vellum tape to adhere the vellum paper with the stamped words. Of course the tape showed.....arrgh!...but I saved the card by drawing over the tape lines with a color pencil to make the mistake look like I intended to have a sketchy border around the words. I was surprised that despite the boo-boos, the card was still very attractive.

Ben Franklin Crafts now has lots of spring and Easter items. I especially love the Easter baking supplies from Wilton (candy sprinkles, cake pans, etc.) and the cute packaging for treats. The Valentine items are still in stock, but I understand that they are selling well, so if you haven't prepared for February 14th you'll need to hurry because you only have a few more days.

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