Natural beauty - butterflies

Good Morning

Its the first Friday of the month so time for a new challenge over at Creative Artiste Mixed Media where the theme is anything mixed media goes, using at least 3 different mediums.

 I made this mdf plaque home decor piece for a friends birthday.  Her favourite colour is purple so I started with that.  We've had some sun this week so Ive seen a few early butterflies out, a couple of brimstones & painted ladies so spring must be here😀

This is another one I forgot to measure before posting but I think it was approx 6x10" 

See below for how I did the background.  I took the chipboard butterflies and on 2 base layers and 1 top layer 1 painted with pale and dark purple paints and then on the other 2 top layers and 1 base layer I used an interference paint which is purple until the light hits it when it turns gold.  Once dry I layered the butterflies together. 

 Inspired by my fellow DT at Creative Artiste Tracey at hotchpotchcreations who uses alot of seed beads in her creations I decided to use some of the million seed beads I have for the bodies of the butterflies - I chose beads in a mix of purples and golds, when the light hits them they really sparkle and shimmer.

I raided my stash of alphas and decided on 'natural beauty' the smaller ones are plastic ones by tim holtz which I covered with very dark green acrylic to take the plastic look away and the larger ones are chipboard which I painted with the purples used on the butterflies.  I then worked out the placement for the alphas and the butterflies and adhered all into place.

You can see the dimension on the butterflies better here and the beads give a lovely 3d effect to the bodies.  To stick the seed beads I added a good layer of tacky pva glue and waited for it to start going sticky and then added plenty of beads and pushed into the glue, once completely dry i brushed off any that hadn't stuck. 

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onto how I did the background

I first coated the background in pink and purple acrylic paints and once dry added texture paste through a large floral stencil, this is a nice big stencil so i could easily pick out the flowers i wanted.  I edged around the flowers with green paints and then dry brushed on a yellowy orange paint to just catch the texture paste flowers 

I added gold glitter paste through a foliage stencil but it wasn't very effective, i think the glitter too chunky for the stencil so switched to gold paint instead, you can just make out both here.  Once the background was finished i coated in mod podge to seal and protect.

This is how it started off - a charity shop find for £1 - I bought it with the sole intention of upcycling it.... First i gave it a light sanding with fine sandpaper and then a coat of gesso and no one would know Tenerife was there!    I also found the pack of greyboard butterflies in the charity shop for £1 so a bargain and the starting point for this project was born.  Now that im doing more mixed media projects  I do pop in charity shops more just to see what they have that I can use as a substrate and to upcycle. Its win win as it supports the charity shop and gives me affordable bases to work on..........mind you I do also have plenty of 'proper' substrates in the cupboard but it is fun to see how something preloved can be turned into something new. 

Items Used:

MDF plaque

Maya Road Chipboard butterflies 

Cosmic shimmer glitter paste 'sahara gold'

Marabu Crea texture paste

Decoart Metallic 'splendid gold'

Pebeo & Folk art acrylic paints

Folk art 'color shift' 'blue violet flash'

Thats crafty 7x7" stencil

13@rts stencil 'tiny leaves'

Tim Holtz adhesive alphas

Chipboard alphas

Gold & Purple seed beads

So hop over to Creative Artiste to join in and see what the rest of the DT created while mixing their mediums

Thank you all for popping by once again. I am still having issues with my eyes especially close up but determined to keep crafting and now using a magnifying glass that hangs around my neck so that is helping a bit but can only do small sessions but better than no crafting! Emmax

Id love to enter the following:

https://craftingfromtheartchallenge.blogspot.com/2026/02/february-challenge-2026.html

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https://dd-tripleb.blogspot.com/2026/03/march-2026-tb-challenge.html

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https://stencilfun.blogspot.com/2026/03/stencil-fun-march-2026-challenge.html  I used a large floral stencil and a small foliage stencil

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https://dragonflydreamschallenges.blogspot.com/2026/03/march-challenge-butterflies.html

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https://tolanythingbutacard.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-outlawz-anything-but-card-march.html

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https://www.simplyellibelle.com/2026/02/garden-party-no-12-anything-in-or-from.html

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